Prio grew up in the small Wisconsin town of Williams Bay on the northern edge of Lake Geneva. She attended the University of Wisconsin but dropped out to get married when her husband, Ross, graduated. He went to work as a grain broker, and the couple settled down in Morton Grove and started a family. As the mother of four children, Prio was the kind of old-fashioned Italian mother who would cook four different meals if each of the children wanted something different.
She did volunteer work for charities and in hospitals. ”I was the ladies golf chairman at the club,” Prio says. ”I was active in the garden club. I guess I`ve always been a people person. I started a ladies ski class, a bowling group. I would always call newcomers to ask them to join. I was the local welcome wagon.”
Prio and her family moved to Lake Geneva in 1968. As the children began leaving home in the late `70s, she and her husband moved into a Chicago apartment. But Prio barely knew the city, so when she took her first tentative steps in real estate in late 1978, there was lots to learn. The people part of the job, however, came naturally.
Prio quickly established a reputation as a sales powerhouse, and other real estate companies began courting her. Rubloff senior vice president Annetta Gray snared her in September 1981.
”What makes Fran a great salesperson is her energy, her genuine like of people and her belief in what she`s selling,” Gray says. ”She believes she`s selling something people need to have. There`s a belief in the real estate industry that some people will sell only so they can make money, but I think she does it because she believes the house or condominium is something wonderful for the buyer.”
Prio, who was named a vice president of Rubloff last year, concentrates her activities in Streeterville, the Gold Coast and Lincoln Park but handles property farther north as well.
”I don`t want people thinking I`m a snob,” she says. ”I have people say, `Will you (take a listing for) a one-bedroom or a studio?` Well, yes. I just sold a $40,000 studio. I treat studio buyers and million-dollar buyers exactly the same. The numbers don`t matter. To each buyer and seller, that transaction is important.”
When Diane and Timothy Schaefer were looking for a house several years ago, Prio spent endless weekends showing them property. ”She`s not averse to work,” Diane Schaefer says. ”She will work one or two years, whatever it takes to find what you want. My husband tormented her, calling all the time and asking what was on the market. He didn`t know if he wanted a single-family, a multifamily, a condo or what. She took us everywhere for months. She was never ticked, never put out. She was always smiling and happy. And she`s not a high-pressure salesperson.
”My most vivid memory is the day we looked at a multifamily building, and you walked in and opened the door to be greeted by the smell from all kinds of cats or whatever. There was Fran in a fur jacket and probably a cashmere suit. She`s putting the key in the lock and there`s a dog barking its brains out inside, and she`s smiling and saying, `Oh, it`s going to be fine.` She goes in, and I hear her saying, `Oh, down, boy; down, boy.` She`ll take you anywhere. That`s part of her selling technique. She`s not afraid to crawl around in basements. Whatever it takes, she does.
”When she was selling my condo before I got married-what a riot. The back of the building has a black iron fire escape, and it`s not exactly glamorous. People put flowers out there, but it`s a fire escape.
”A friend of mine who is a broker brought a client to see it, and she told me she had never seen a person show an apartment the way Fran did. When she got to the fire escape, Fran said it reminded her of a flat in London and how beautiful it was with the flowers and tomato plants.
”She really turned it around and made it seem attractive without making it seem more than it was. I`ll tell you: For the rest of the days I lived there, I would think, `This is really neat. It`s just like living in a flat in London.` ”
Most of the time, Prio refrains from expressing her opinion, remembering the day early in her career when she was showing an apartment decorated in
”godawful bubblegum pink and lime green with curved walls” and almost put her foot in her mouth.
”I almost said, `I`m embarrassed to show you this,` but I didn`t,” she recalls. ”We walked in, and the clients said, `Isn`t this beautiful!` Was I saved on that one. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, so you don`t say it. You ask, `How does this work for you?` ”
As the marketplace changes, so does the real estate industry, and Prio says that since she entered the field, the computerization of listings has made the industry ”more professional. ”Every buyer and seller is entitled to what is public knowledge in terms of recent sales, which is available on computer. The same information helps you price a product better. It helps establish the value, makes it more credible. It helps your buyer know he`s paying the right price when he can look at the sale prices of comparable properties. We`re making progress.”
Since late 1989, real estate brokers in Illinois have been required by law to inform potential buyers that they are subagents of the seller and, therefore, owe their loyalty to the seller. Similar disclosure laws nationwide have helped spawn a new style of brokers, buyer-brokers who work exclusively for the buyer (see accompanying story below).
Prio, who takes ethics very seriously, seems to work as a sort of dual agent, judging from her many repeat customers and steady stream of referrals. She frequently finds herself in the enviable position of sometimes having to refer listings to colleagues when she believes her workload is too heavy to do them justice.
”It is difficult when you represent both sides and you try to stay as objective as possible. In some situations, what I do is allow both party`s attorneys to get involved because it is important that both sides are treated fairly.
”You have to be interested in people and their needs and trying to do the best you can for everyone you come in contact with. You have to be trustworthy. You have to be a lot of things. You have to be gentle, calming and reassuring.”
Prio is nothing if not soft-sell or, as she puts it, ”aggressively quiet.” She says she has an intuitive sense of the residential setting where a client would be happy. But since she always says ”brokers have no opinion,” she simply shows clients enough property so that they have the information they need to make a decision. And it doesn`t matter to her how long it takes for that to happen.
”I worked with a man moving in from out of town to take a very prestigious position who saw an apartment in this one building, and he fell in love with it,” she says. ”He was reacting to the decoration of the apartment and didn`t know the city or the building.
”It was a young singles building that I knew he wouldn`t be happy in, but I couldn`t make that decision for him. The other broker was sort of pressuring him, so I suggested that we go down to the lobby and talk about it. We sat and watched the people come and go. We saw people in bare feet and cutoffs. Lots of young people. I wanted him to see that, and he discovered it. He said, `This is not my kind of building.` So you have to be careful.
”I could have sold him the apartment just like that,” Prio says, snapping her fingers. ”But would he have been happy? No. Would he have come back to me? No. Give me a referral? No.”
And that, after all, is the bottom line in real estate.
