In RARE Form: What Happens When Realtors—and Others—Join Forces

RARE also brought along project manager Gloria Romero, and added interior designer Lisa Samuel (who used to write Home’s Artful Living column). “It’s wonderful being around such positive people, and Ralph and Alan are very careful about who they bring into their circle,” says Samuels, who built up her business and her reputation in Santa Fe over the past 27 years. “It’s also great having a team and knowing that if I need support with something, there’s someone there who can be at the ready. But we also share a philosophy: tailoring every design to the client and the space, and that’s never going to change. Because at the core, that’s how I do my work, and that’s probably why Ralph and Alan value me so much—because I really do tailor to the client.”

Homeowners vs. Investors

The other part of RARE that will only probably expand is that of renovating and updating houses, particularly those in Las Campanas that had their moment 20 or 30 years ago, but from which the bloom, shall we say, has left the rose. It’s work Ralph and Alan have been perfecting over the years, and they have two main types for whom they provide such work: homeowners and investors. Homeowners are those clients who bought a house from them 10, 15 years ago and now want to sell it and move on (buy a new home); and in order to make that “old” home more attractive and to the tastes of current home shoppers, they update it: taking out somber rows of vigas, switching out the dining room for a living room with expansive views, adding a study or a guest room. Then there are the investors, people who are “looking,” says Ralph, “at what the return is, if it’s a development or if it’s a fixed, refurbished kind of thing. They often live out of state but see what a great market Santa Fe is and want to participate in it.” Or maybe they want to start buying houses where they want to develop a piece of land their family left them. RARE can guide them through the entire process, all the way through the final stage of selling the houses. And what further distinguishes RARE from other real estate ventures is that their primary investor, with whom they’ve worked for years, who’s based in California, “part of the goal with his real estate investment,” explains Ralph, “is finding sellers who are struggling with keeping up their house or they’re in a situation financially where they need help. One of his goals is finding that distressed person who needs help, who maybe needs cash to get out of their situation, then make a nice product for the next buyer at an affordable price.” Simpatico with Ralph and Alan’s values (the two support Girls Inc. and the Cancer Foundation, among many other causes), when this investor sees how stressed a potential seller is, the kind of stress that others might exploit to their gain, “his first words to them are, because I’ve heard him on the phone,” says Ralph, “What do you need to get out? And if it’s doable, it’s just done. He wants to be fair about it. And that’s the way we live our lives. That’s how we operate our business. We try to be fair across the board.”