Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/62230
a sheet. "I won't bug you, I promise." Who don't you know? I ask. "You really do have to stay connected and available to do well," says Gulick, who currently lists about 35 properties, down from the 60 to 65 she listed during the mid-2000s. "You're always on, even if you're not always working. I'll go out with friends and they'll bitch about me answering the phone. I tell them, 'You don't get mad about it when I'm trying to sell your home.'" Ten she laughs that Sandy Gulick laugh, a throaty cackle that's infectious and fills the room like, well, the smell of freshly baked cookies. Says Suchy of RE/MAX, who's known Gu- lick for years: "Being fun and maintaining your sense of humor goes a long way in the real-estate business." Te open house ends with Kentucky ahead by double-digits and Gulick out of cookies. She probably had 50 people walk through… on a UK basketball afternoon! Of course most of them came to visit with her. A week later, she informs me that the young family returned for a second look. As of press time, the house hasn't sold. Yet. L illy's for lunch. 1 p.m. Gulick. Matilda Andrews, Gulick's "cousin-in-law." Me. A photographer, Natasha Sud, who, naturally, knows Gulick's daughter, Elizabeth (Lizzie). Louisville could really be the Two Degrees of Sandy Gulick. Te Gulick Network began in the early 1980s, when she found herself divorced with two small children and trying to get by on a bookkeeper's wage. "I had been raised to be married and not have to work," says Gulick, who was born in Shanghai, China, but grew up in Louisville. "Ten I thought, what if I don't get married again? I don't want to be poor my whole life." So she did something you really don't think people ever actually do — she took a voca- tion test. Te results told Margaret Sandal Honeycutt Gulick that she should be 1) a real-estate agent, 2) a public official, or 3) an IRS agent. Seriously? Tat's how it started? Yep. And then the Gulick connections kicked in. Her first sale was to a good friend. When Gulick objected that she was too new to the business, her friend replied, "How hard can it be?" Gulick sold her friend the first house they looked at together on Franck Avenue in Cres- cent Hill. Te friend still lives there. A few days after that sale, Gulick picked up the phone and the person on the other line said, "I understand you're an agent." Yes, Gulick tentatively replied. A month later, she and the caller closed on a $1 million home. "Tat test was right," Gulick says now over lunch. "I told myself at the time that if I don't make any money in two months, I'd get another job. But I sold." She started at the now-defunct Home Store, then was recruited by John Stough to join Se- monin Realtors — then and now home to the largest number of agents (some 450) in the city — where she stayed for 17 years. Eight years ago, Stough, Gulick and several others from Semonin broke out on their own, starting Ken- tucky Select in July 2004. "Women are more patient than men," Gulick says. Between bites of red fish, I've asked why so many more women seem to be in real estate these days. She turns to Andrews: "Can I say that for print in Louisville Magazine?" "You've never not said what you wanted to," Andrews replies. "We're creative problem-solvers," Gulick con- tinues. "I always think things will work out for the best. I'm filled with platitudes. But, honey, I was living on $8,000 a year at one point. I can say anything." Lunch is going on two hours and three cours- es and it feels more like five minutes. But there are houses to see. We stop first at a modest craftsman on Rans- dell Avenue in the Cherokee Triangle, one of Gulick's main sales stomping grounds. She's sold so many properties on Ransdell that she's lost count, including two houses she owned her- self. She's now in her third house on Ransdell, living next door to a house she used to own. And next door to another house she just sold. And across the street from two more she sold. Te property we're now seeing sits opposite the house where Hunter S. Tompson grew up and, the story goes, blasted a shotgun hole in the roof. Te listing came via recommendation. As Gulick puts it, "If somebody is happy with you, they tell their friends. If somebody is not happy with you, they also tell their friends." Next stop: Sandy's place. It's a small white- brick bungalow with black shutters and a black iron fence around the front yard — a safe area for her 22-month-old grandson, Lizzie's son Solomon, who calls his grandmother "Googie." "I've moved eight or nine times," Gulick says. "I love to buy duds, houses that need work." She renovated her current address — her "feel-good house" — tearing down walls and shrinking (yes, shrinking) the kitchen and painting the walls an outgoing yellow called "golden laughter." Gulick takes a seat on a chaise lounge in the open den, posing for photographs, answering questions, checking her Blackberry, talking art like a gallery owner. Her golden-laughter walls are camouflaged with original works from her favorite artists — Tatjana Krizmanic; Crescent Hill mailman- turned-painter Steve Cull; daughter Lizzie's felt work; Solomon's Pollock-esque crayon scrib- blings; Carolyn Gassan Plochmann … .("Bren- da Deemer of B. Deemer Gallery said, 'You'd buy anything with red in it,' and she's right!") "My house is the antithesis of what you're sup- posed to do if you want to sell your house," she says. "It's filled with personal stuff." Te day ends — for the photographer and me, not Sandy — at what's known as the White House of Louisville. It's the Highlands home of Dottie Cherry, widow of the Humana founder Wendell Cherry. And Gulick will be listing it soon. Tis is pure photo-op. Sandy Gulick in front of a mansion. She's sold houses that range in price from $41,000 to $4.7 million in her career; this one will fall closer to that high end. She stands in front of the towering white Doric columns, holding keys in one hand, her phone up to her ear, whatever. Get a picture of her bling, she suggests. Or her freshly painted orange fingernails. ("It's called 'A Roll in the Hague.' Isn't that hysterical?") Sandy Gulick has definitely come out of her shell. "Honey," she tells the photographer, "if you give me a fistful of money, I'll hold that, too." 5.12 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE [49]