Brokers to the World

One of the offshoots of the world economic boom is an international boom in real estate. From Rhodesia to Rochester, land shoppers are clamoring for attractive parcels of property. Only ten years ago Switzerland was the only European country in which a foreign broker could easily do business in real estate; today, firmer currencies have made the task much easier --and tremendously profitable. The firm that stands to benefit most by the boom is Manhattan's Previews, Inc., the world's only international clearinghouse for real estate, and an experienced dealer in both the exotic and the practical.

Previews considers itself a sort of stock exchange for world property, brings far-flung buyers and sellers together through twelve offices in the U.S. and abroad and 20,000 cooperating brokers in almost every country in the world. Each year it handles $75 million worth of property, in 1957 sold $28 million worth--and made $2,250,000 in fees. Last week Previews' president, white-haired John Colquhoun Tysen, 45, was off on an annual world tour to sew up new deals with pashas and parvenus, unemployed royalty and hard-headed businessmen.

Careful Eye. Tysen is convinced that some of the best buys are in the sunny resort lands of southern Europe. His Spanish subsidiary, formed only last month, is already dickering to develop a three-mile stretch of virgin coastline above Valencia into Europe's fanciest resort. "The world has gone sun crazy," says Tysen--and Previews intends to grab a place in the sun.

Previews also keeps a careful eye on depreciated slum areas that may go industrial, is gradually increasing its trade in land for industrial purposes. Tysen is negotiating with Belgian government officials about industrial development of the Inga Rapids area of the Congo River, a vast, water-rich slice of the Belgian Congo (TIME, Nov. 25) which engineers fondly describe as "the Ruhr of the 21st century." Tysen will also shop around for three kings interested in plush homes, has hunting licenses for land for a British firm that wants to build 700-room luxury hotels in Lisbon and Vienna, a U.S. hotel chain interested in London.

Do-It-Yourself Parliament. Previews still does 90% of its business in residential land ("The appreciation can be fantastic"), specializes in finding buyers for U.S. residences such as Bing Crosby's seven-room lodge on Hayden Lake in Idaho, now for sale at $95,000. "We don't live by souffles alone," says Executive Vice President Robert T. Furman Jr. But Previews has made its reputation peddling white elephants and exotic properties. For $300,000 Tysen will sell a half share in an Irish distillery, for $182,000 the title to the Windward Island of Mustique, which Previews claims includes the right to appoint one's own parliament.

Whether a customer wants to sell a house in which all the rooms are round (Previews sold one in New Jersey) or turn his farm into a tourist paradise, Previews' approach is the same. Previews gets 1 1/2% of the asking price for handling a property on a three-year contract, advertises it with attractive brochures, often distributed to as many as 5,000 other brokers. When the property is sold, Previews picks up another 2 1/2%. The local broker also gets a commission.

Just Looking. Previews was founded in 1933 by three young New Yorkers who realized that many people could not spare the time and effort to shop for just the house they wanted. They took movies of properties for sale (at a cost of $50 to the owner), showed them to prospective buyers. The firm lost money steadily for six years, largely because it could not get enough listings from unfriendly brokers. It finally switched to brochures, upped its fees--and began making money.

Trim (6 ft. 1 in., 170 lbs.) John Tysen, Paris born and British educated, got hired at Previews in 1936, when he dropped in to do an errand for a friend. Despite a dandy's flair for clothes and a Cantabrigian accent that sometimes made him almost unintelligible, Tysen proved to be a crack salesman, became sales manager in 1940, president in 1950 (at $25,000 a year, plus fat commissions and bonuses), boosted volume fourfold. Tysen holds as sacred writ that there is more money to be made in land than any other commodity, but he himself owns nothing more than a nine-room penthouse apartment in Manhattan. Says he: "There's a conflict of interest. You can't serve yourself and serve a client."

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