NEWS - Residential Real Estate

By Lou Phelps, SBJ Staff

Nov 14, 2011 - In business, one company’s loss can be another’s gain. As Cora Bett Thomas Realty company goes through a major transition period, one of the company’s primary competitors – Seabolt Brokers of Savannah - appears to be benefitting.

And, once again, a series of changes are pitting two of the city’s leading and legendary woman Realtors against each other, Cora Bett Thomas and Elaine Seabolt. Seabolt is the former president and Chief Operating Officer of Thomas’ firm.

Last week, the majority of Thomas’ residential agents associated with the company’s Savannah office – and Thomas’ top producers - resigned and joined Seabolt Brokers, a company Seabolt founded in 2006. As Seabolt Brokers has grown, the company relocated to its current offices at 1015 Whitaker St. two years ago, now facing Forsyth Park. As of Friday, Seabolt Brokers now has 36 Realtors associated with the firm, up from 23 only a week ago.

And, Seabolt Brokers was selected two weeks ago as the new residential real estate partner of Christies Great Estates after Christie’s ended its relationship with Thomas’ firm as of Monday, October 31. 

Joining Seabolt Brokers last week were Patricia Bishop. Melinda Martin Bailey, Ruth Seese, Peter Nelsen, Stephanie Wilson-Evans, Jeanne Saussy, Emily Saussy, Victoria Turner , John Maxwell , Betty Pinckney, Debora Smith, Karen Washburn and Helen Duffy. 

In addition to residential real estate, Seabolt Brokers also has a property management division headed by Angie Smith and Mark Haslam, and a commercial real estate practice led by Margie Gordon. Gordon has handled many of the commercial sales that have transpired in Savannah’s historic district in recent years, Seabolt adds.

But don’t count Cora Bett Thomas out just yet. When you think about the top realtors in residential real estate – the big deals - Cora Bett Thomas’ name is at the top of anyone’s list, leading a company she founded in 1995. She has ridden the wave of residential real estate growth in the region for the past fifteen years.

In 2008, even as the residential business began to decline, she formally expanded to Beaufort County, purchasing two residential real estate companies there, and opening a Cora Bett Thomas Realty office at 707 Bay Street in Beaufort, still operating.

But, Thomas’ firm is dealing with the dramatic downturn in residential real estate business on a number of levels, forced to restructure her company. On November 1, her headquarters at 24 E. Oglethorpe Street which she owned was lost in a foreclosure, purchased by the lending bank. Thomas said told other local media in the Savannah area that she is working with the bank to try to repurchase the property. And, her remaining Realtors have been told that no date for leaving the property has been set.

Thomas attributes part of her difficulties as due to a law suit with her former partner, Atty. Ronnie Cohen, according to an interview she gave last week.

The company’s Cora Bett Thomas Property Management office on York St, overseen by Therese Garafola, is still going strong, according to sources close to the company. And, Thomas’ commercial real estate team is still intact, operating from the Oglethorpe Street address for the time being. Several of her residential Realtors in the Savannah office have also remained with her company.  The company is alive and kicking. 

Compounding the last several years of downturn and struggle, Thomas contracted West Nile encephalitis this past summer after a trip up North, and she only recently returned home to Savannah after an extended stay at Candler Hospital in Savannah, and then Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore. The Savannah Morning News reported that Thomas says she is back at work, though she acknowledges that she still has a road ahead of recovery.

Seabolt is Looking Forward

Seabolt takes no pleasure in Thomas’ difficulties, and instead prefers to focus on what her team has accomplished during the difficult past five years, as well as what is ahead for her company.

She says that she did not solicit Thomas’ agents. “Once the agents learned that she had lost the Christie’s designation on Monday, and the office on Tuesday (Nov.1), they started calling me,” said Seabolt. “I learned that she had lost the Christie’s luxury designation, and I contacted them, and picked it up Nov. 2....They terminated the agreement with Cora Bett Thomas Realty. They had started the process of termination with the firm awhile ago, I learned.”

Seabolt Brokers is also part of Harry Norman properties, nationally, and the luxury portfolio at www.LuxuryPortfolio.com. “I picked up the Christie’s luxury designation she lost,” she explained.

Two years ago, when Seabolt moved her team into their offices on Whitaker Street,  she thought it would be more than large enough. “But now,” she said, “we’re sitting on top of each other right now. But when we’re finished, we’ll be fine. We have to rework the space – we’re going to have to double up." 

“They like the synergy of it all, I think, of us being there together. It’s been a crazy week, of course. Most brokers get an agent here and there – I got 13 at one time!” she added.

While she’s looking forward, she would also like to set the record straight. Despite rumors to the contrary, Seabolt, who was with Thomas’ firm for ten years as a Realtor, the company’s Executive Vice President, and then a year as President and COO, makes clear that she resigned from the firm. “I called her (Cora Bett) on a Saturday, and we met with her at her home on a Sunday. I told her it was time for me to leave. I quit. I was not fired,” she explained. “It’s now come full circle,” Seabolt said Sunday night, in an interview with the Savannah Business Journal.

“I created a company in a very difficult time. I have a great team. I kept my door open, and I stayed under the radar,” Seabolt said. ”Five years ago, I had a lot of bankers and CPA’s tell me that ‘this is the worst time to start a real estate company.’ But, I just stayed focused. I didn’t take anything from anybody – others lost it.”

Looking ahead, she said her goals remain consistent. “What we really want to do is to continue to establish ourselves as a first class, boutique real estate company. We’re not trying to be a large company like Keller Williams. We want to have the top agents, and have a creative, nice business. We feel better now that many of us are back together,” she summarized.