Mike Kobeissi on Pasadena and the Seasoned Agent

Mike Kobeissi’s February 2023 WordPress essay argues that a Pasadena purchase or sale goes better with a seasoned agent, and it devotes the bulk of its length to what makes the city worth that care.

The thesis comes early. A practiced agent, the author writes, can steer a client through each stage of a purchase or a sale, and he says the market at the time favored sellers, with houses changing hands quickly. The rest of the essay is a portrait of the city that explains why a newcomer would want a guide.

The city in the essay

Pasadena appears as a city of large annual celebrations, research and engineering, the arts, history and architecture. Its housing runs from small California bungalows to sprawling estates, much of it inside historic districts and close to shops and restaurants. That stock has deep roots. KCET recounts that Pasadena was founded in 1875 by settlers from Indiana, that its population quadrupled between 1900 and 1920, and that the resulting housing boom arrived just as the Arts and Crafts movement and the architects Charles and Henry Greene did.¹

The essay lists the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl game as yearly draws. Visit Pasadena dates the parade to New Year’s Day in 1890, when the Valley Hunt Club decorated carriages with roses to show winter visitors what bloomed in January.² The stadium itself, designed by Myron Hunt and opened in 1922, was named a National Historic Landmark in 1987, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy.³ The author also names Old Pasadena for its Victorian commercial blocks and its Art Deco facades, and a cluster of institutions that includes Caltech, ArtCenter College of Design, Fuller Theological Seminary, the Norton Simon Museum and the Pacific Asia Museum.

He describes the economy as broad, with hospitals and clinics, banking, colleges, tech firms and stores all playing a part, and he credits the city’s appeal partly to its nearness to Los Angeles, its restaurants and shopping, and its historic houses. The city’s own planners now make a similar case. A 2024 economic strategy from the City of Pasadena aims to build on Caltech and a technical workforce to draw life sciences, artificial intelligence and quantum computing firms, and it reports employment nearing the pre pandemic level of about 80,000 jobs.⁴

A note for new agents

The essay closes with a short detour for readers who might want to enter the trade themselves. Success, the author writes, depends on a willingness to keep learning and to sharpen one’s skills. For the licensing exam he recommends a course that combines classroom sessions with online study, so a student can stay organized while working on a flexible schedule, and he suggests looking for instructors with a reputation for mentoring the people they train.