Anita Rozenblat once had a life in the limelight, appearing regularly on The Shopping Channel to sell her own fashion line. She dined on Caesar salads with Joan Rivers and sipped Diet Cokes with Sylvester Stallone’s wife in the greenroom. But she’s given up all that to become a top real estate agent in her hometown suburb of Montreal.
Now, after being in the business for only 2 1/2 years, she’s won a Centurion Excellence Award from Century 21, for having sold 40 properties last year worth more than $18 million. Rozenblat doesn’t miss her past life for a second and “I’m not at my peak yet,” she says.
Anita Rozenblat
Rozenblat’s current career is a long way from organizing fashion show benefits, which is how she got her start in the clothing business as a teen. After witnessing a downright bad fashion show at a Montreal nightclub, she walked up to a well-known local personality and told him how horrible she thought it was. Unbeknownst to Rozenblat, he was the organizer. He asked her if she thought she could organize a better fashion show, leaving her little choice but to take up the challenge. Fortunately, her fashion show turned out well and several followed suit, with Rozenblat raising money for causes ranging from children with AIDS to juvenile diabetes. After organizing the shows part-time for five years, she decided to design her own fashions.
Rozenblat created a collection of comfortable, high-end leather stretch wear, targeted at women aged 30 and up. The collection of jackets, shirts and pants was ideal for women whose bodies had changed through weight gain, weight loss or childbirth, and helped them “create that body that we once had.”
It sold under the Alfred Chung name in Winners in Canada and T.J. Maxx in the U.S. and U.K. After a buyer asked her to create an additional name for her clothing line, she came up with one while reading an alphabetical book (“A is for apple…”) to her young daughter. At the letter M, there was moss on one page and mosquito on the next. Et voila: Mosskito.
One of Rozenblat’s goals was to get her fashions exposed on Canada’s Shopping Channel. After five years of trying, she finally convinced a buyer to give her chance. “To have a collection of clothing on a shopping channel is a really big privilege,” she says. For the next several years she was a regular staple on TV, presenting an exclusive line on the Toronto-based network.
“I had a lot of fun and met a lot of people, but that wasn’t where I wanted to be. Travelling is great if you’re single and have no commitment to a family.” But Rozenblat, who has two daughters, eventually tired of the regular trips to Toronto and eating chicken wings alone in a hotel room. “I felt that if I was going to work hard and be away from my family, I’d rather do it here in my own hometown.”
Several people told Rozenblat she’d be a natural for real estate, and she decided to take the plunge, taking real estate courses at night while winding down her fashion business of 17 years.
“It was time for a new challenge,” she says. “I love talking. I’m just a people person. I can almost sell anything, I believe.” After selling fashion for years, “selling a home was not going to be a difficult task,” Rozenblat says – she would just have to learn about things like foundations and electricity.
When Rozenblat told friends she was going into real estate, they told her it was the best decision she’d ever made. As an added bonus, five listings were handed to her by friends and acquaintances upon her debut in the business.
Rozenblat decided to focus on two areas – Côte St. Luc, the west-end Montreal neighbourhood where she’s lived most of her life, and nearby Hampstead. Having a large network and family helped her land listings quickly. So did her TV notoriety: clients still say, “‘Oh, I remember you from the Shopping Channel, and I still have some of your clothing.’ It shows that my clothing had some quality,” she says.
Rozenblat, who works for Century 21 Vision, now believes she is the highest listing agent in Côte St. Luc. She takes on listings for all price ranges in the area – from $300,000 to $1.2 million – and deals with a demographic that ranges from young married couples to seniors.
Her quick rise through the real estate ranks has engendered “a lot of negativity from agents who don’t do as well,” she says. But, Rozenblat says, “I’m not an aggressive agent, I’m just a good agent. Frankly, the more people talk about me, the better it is for me.”
As of early May, Rozenblat had sold 15 properties this year and is on track to meet or surpass last year’s results. “Quite frankly, I believe the recession is rumour. Whatever happens in the States doesn’t necessarily happen to us.” If homes have dropped in price, it’s simply because they were overpriced to begin with, she says.
Still, the recession has had some impact on the local market. “The banks are not giving it away. They’re being very difficult. Every file is stressful. Their rates are great but they’re being very finicky,” she says.
Although she’s given up her fashion career, Rozenblat discovered five years ago that she had another hidden talent: making Judaica sculptures by hand, out of mystique clay. She had an exhibition of her sculptures in Las Vegas, and has used proceeds from sales to buy a Torah at a local synagogue to honour her late brother. Rozenblat likes the fact real estate can have positive impacts on people’s lives – citing the women in divorce cases who thank her for changing their lives through home sales. “I love this business. I wake up in the morning and look forward to going on my computer.
