Residential Broker, By Dollar Volume

Winner

Raju Chhabria

Shorewood Realtors Inc.

Runners Up

Joyce Rey

Coldwell Banker Jon Douglas Co.

Leo Nordine

Leo Nordine Realtors

Raju Chhabria knows how to delegate, and that, he says, is his secret to selling $84.3 million worth of homes last year more than any other Realtor in Los Angeles County.

Chhabria, who operates out of a Shorewood Realtors Inc. satellite office in Manhattan Beach, employs four full-time assistants who do everything from creating ads to coordinating inspections. In addition, he employs two agents who show properties to prospective buyers freeing up Chhabria for more actual selling.

Of the $175,000 in commissions Chhabria generates in the average month, he spends about 20 percent to pay for his support staff and advertising.

He says he’s the only Shorewood Realtor who gets 100 percent of the commissions he generates. So what does Shorewood get?

“They get the use of my name, as well as all the escrow business I generate for them,” he says. “Also, their agents make a lot of money by sitting at open houses for my listings.”

And Chhabria has lots of listings 40 to 60 selections at any given time, most of them in the South Bay. His current listings range from a $99,000 home in Inglewood to a $5.5 million estate in Palos Verdes.

And while other Realtors typically find buyers for only about 5 percent of their listings, Chhabria’s success rate is closer to 30 percent.

But doesn’t he get accused of focusing too heavily on his own listings, which generate higher commissions?

“My secret is that I listen carefully to what they want,” he says. And if none of his own listings work, Chhabria claims to have “an intimate knowledge” of all the other regional listings.

He came to Shorewood four years ago after nearly a decade with Century 21, where he says he sold a house on his first day as a licensed Realtor. He ended up managing dozens of agents at his Century 21 office, but missed being out on the street doing deals. So he jumped to Shorewood.

Besides delegating paperwork, he says another factor contributing to his success is his college degree in accounting. “I can qualify a buyer in five minutes,” he says.

Scott Smith