Finding Faith at the Marriott Marquis

“Retail is my detail,” famed realtor Faith Hope Consolo told a panel last Friday afternoon.
You got the feeling she’s used the line before.
You got the feeling that Consolo, famous for getting her name—and the names of her clients into the papers—has used a lot of her lines more than once. In person, she’s a force of nature. Funny in an old-school way.
I had wanted to see her in person, since I’ve quoted her in newspaper pieces and blog items for many years. And because she sends me stuff with her name on it, like pads and pens. She takes a fair amount of heat for her self-promotion, but she made it clear that she can live with that. If you can’t take the heat, then get out of the kitchen. And all that.
“You take the kisses. You take the hits,” is the way Consolo put it at the panel, which was part of a city real estate expo at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. Also on the panel: an old pal of mine, Linda Alexander, a p.r. guru with her own shop, Alexander Marketing Corp.
I love Consolo cause she’s so darn quotable, and so darn willing to share those quotes when an ugly deadline looms. She’s even good at getting back to me to tell me that she cannot get back to me, so that pretty much makes her a journalist’s favorite.
She’s enough of a traditionalist to believe in print, even in a digital age, and she says that her clients want to see their properties publicized in what may seem like an old-fashioned way. She held up an imaginary magazine and said, “They like to say, ‘Oh, my God. She looks terrible.’”
There’s something inspiring about Consolo, about the mix of gritty and funny, about the way she even bothers to have a public persona when so much about real estate in this city has become rote or tired. On Friday afternoon she was weary bright red and passing out candy, taking names and talking about making deals. But the warmth of her jokes and the talent of remembering names only goes so far. She’s tough too.
“We’re not here to make friend,” she said. “We’re here to make business.”