It's family first for father-son Realtors in Oklahoma

WARR ACRES — Somebody suggested: Why not write a story about a father-son Realtor team in time for Father's Day Sunday?

Sure! Easy. I've met a few over the years.

But wait: I haven't met them all.

So off I went to meet Thomas and Steve Lay of Thomas Lay Realtors in Warr Acres.

Thomas Lay, 76, started the company in 1976. He and his son, Steve, 48, have worked together for 28 years.

I first mentioned Thomas Lay Realtors in a report on Dec. 26, 1999. I first quoted someone from the company, by phone, on March 17, 2001.

"Thomas Lay Realtors" has been mentioned in The Oklahoman 125 times since I came to work here in October 1999, almost every mention at my hand — yet we had never met.

It was high time.

It turned out to be a double-dose father-son story.

Thomas Lay was introduced to the real estate business as a young person thanks to his father, W.A. Lay, a land broker and developer starting in the 1950s. He wound up spending 14 years in management at Western Electric, but went into real estate himself with Thomas Lay Realtors, mostly in home sales, in '76.

Steve Lay got involved similarly, helping maintain rental properties as a teenager. Then at age 20, back home after his sophomore year at the University of Arkansas, he stayed home to work with his father.

Thomas Lay Realtors now deals in land and commercial property, buying, selling and leasing, and father and son work together on transactions.

The company has developed an expertise and reputation in handling church properties.

A particularly meaningful, and complicated, church transaction almost ended in a wreck when one church bought another one, then had it almost go back because the congregation couldn't make the payments. Rather than leaving the congregation without a church house, the seller forgave the debt, and the brokers gave up their earned commissions, to keep both going.

That's a deal for the books — a hymn book.

First deals are usually memorable.

Steve said his was a 3,200-square-foot warehouse in south Oklahoma City. Not that exciting, but a big deal to him for obvious reasons.

His father's was another one for the books, an Oklahoma housing history book anyway. It was a little house in Packingtown, the meatpacking district, now called Stockyards City, near the Oklahoma National Stockyards.

"I was starting in business — never worked for anybody else. I kind of started out on the side of just taking anything I could," Thomas Lay recalled. "As I was showing the house, we went back into the bedroom and it had dirt floors. So I didn't think I could sell it. But the people kept the house very clean; they always swept the dirt floors, and we did sell it."

That's a royal we — because back then it was just him.

Today, he's part of a literal we.

"What works well for us is we always put our father-son relationship first. Business does not affect our relationship," Steve said at their office at 5500 Northwest Expressway, Suite C. "I think that's how we've enjoyed it so much.

"When we work deals, our role is to make both sides happy, and get creative on how we can solve issues for both sides. Because if both sides don't feel like they're winning, it's not going to work. That's the challenge of it. We kind of brainstorm back and forth to see how we can put the puzzle together on it."

Not that they always agree.

"But we'll work it out," Thomas Lay said, "and more or less take the best decision — not worry about who's right or wrong — the decision that's best for the buyer or seller."

"No 'horror stories' like some family businesses," Steve Lay said. "We've never had it. We just keep what's important first. Our family's the most important thing. The transactions and the money, that's secondary. If it all was gone tomorrow, we'd still have our relationship — we'd just do something else."

Happy Father's Day, y'all and all!

You can reach Real Estate Editor Richard Mize at rmize@oklahoman.com.