Among the 22,000 attendees was Hillary Clinton, who joined NAR prez Gary Thomas on stage Saturday at the annual convention. (Foreigner performed Sunday night, but she's arguably the bigger rock star... there were so many people there that we were forced to snap her on a screen from the overflow room.) Hillary shared her home buying stories. When Bill's presidency was ending and they had to vacate 1600 Pennsylvania, the "most patient, helpful Realtors" showed them 50 homes in New York as the Secret Service followed.
Hillary wasn't the only celeb in attendence. Retail mortgage company Guaranteed Rate has a new spokesman, TV host Ty Pennington, who posed for a photo opp at its NAR conference booth with Coldwell Banker's Denise Love. Also part of the fun, Wells Fargo set up a rousing cover band outside the exhibit hall that changed the lyrics in John Mellencamp's (or was it John Couger then?) "Jack and Diane" to "hold on to Wells Fargo as long as you can."
NAR's commercial constituency threw a shindig Saturday night under a disco ball at ROE Lounge. There, we snapped Pacific Realty Partners' Roselyne Genin, who grew up in France and has visited 49 states (Alaska is the lone holdout). With her is Pastiche Communications' Carol Weinrich, who met her husband, Helsel Incorporated Realtors' James Helsel, through NAR. Both Roselyne and IREMP & Associates Realty prez Yolanda Velasco are both certified international property specialists.
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