Digital Extra

2/20/97
Marcia Carpenter: A passion for real estate

By KAREN DAVIS
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer

Neither industrial development nor experiences with subtle or overt racism were enough to deter Marcia Carpenter from pursuing her passion for property investment.

For nearly 30 years Carpenter has been in the business of buying and selling homes, acting as broker for other buyers, and managing properties.

It was not a vocation that she necessarily sought.

The first 18 years of her professional career were spent as a licensed practical nurse at Rhode Island Hospital. A native of New York, Carpenter was raised in Providence and got married at 16.

In the early 1960s, she and her husband Thee, a North Carolina native, began investigating methods of financing college educations for their son, Robert, and daughter, Tracey.

After studying investment options, they believed the best investment was to purchase a house. They chose a triple-decker located on Plain Street near the hospital and were soon forced to sell it to make way for hospital expansion.

They had similar experiences in having to sell purchased homes on Corliss Street and off North Main Street to make way for the main post office and the University Heights shopping plaza.

Carpenter's decision to pursue the realty business full time was rudely inspired by a sales agent who refused to sell a house in the Washington Park neighborhood to an African-American buyer.

Carpenter had taken the buyer, who was a friend, to look at the house and provide advice. When they got there, the agent bad-mouthed the property, was non-commital and told them to come back another day.

Carpenter and her buyer left, thought better of it, and then returned to the house to find that the sellers had no problem selling to blacks, but the agent had condemned the idea. In spite the agent's efforts at social engineering, Carpenter's friend bought the house and Carpenter's new career began in earnest.

With her husband still working his foundry job and dabbling in the trucking and used furniture business, she took a job with a temporary agency, worked part time, and took the classes needed to acquire her realtor's license. Carpenter said she was fortunate in that her husband was her partner in the venture and he loved to do rehab work, which eliminated the expense of hiring contractors.

The Carpenters opened an office on Cranston Street but later relocated to a large three-story building on Broad Street that had once housed a doctor's office.

Carpenter manages her one-woman operation at 672 Broad St. After setting up her office, she later discovered that her office is in the same room where she and her husband had come to take pre-marital blood tests, giving the location both practical and sentimental value.

Over the years, she has succeeded in placing many friends and referred clients in homes, noting their desires and presenting them with choices. She often advises renters to invest and buy property if they are able and reminds them that their first purchase does not have to be their last.

But the road to realizing Carpenter's dreams did not come without potholes. She found what she still considers to be her dream home in 1965 on Charles Street. The family moved into the brick Colonial, but were subjected to racial slurs, threatening notes and phone calls from a small number of her predominately white neighbors.

While the tension escalated to the point where police were assigned to escort her young daughter home from school, the family would not be bullied out of the home with hardwood floors and a sturdy design.

They lived there for ten years -- and hated to leave it. By that time, neighbors had given their unspoken, unsolicited acceptance.

Carpenter said she has invested in and rehabilitated properties chiefly on the Providence's South Side. For many years, she would get calls from realtors who did not want to do business there and would ask her to handle rentals or sales for them.

That attitude has since changed, as more realtors see potential profits in revitalization efforts in low-income neighborhoods.

Carpenter said she believes increasing single-family home ownership is the key to rebuilding neighborhoods. Highly populated housing complexes are not the answer.

"A house in the ghetto is much better than a tenement in the ghetto," Carpenter said. "What would give a kid more pride than to say `We own our own house'?"

A former president of the Greater Providence Board of Realtors, Carpenter has sat on various community boards but shies away from meetings and committees and prefers to join active boards.

Currently she sits on the board of the Broad Street-Main Street project, designed to rejuvenate that area, and the board at San Miguel School, an alternative middle school.

Despite maintaining a realty business that survived the recessions of the 1980s and early 1990s, Carpenter said she did not realize wealth in the business, even though the opportunities were there.

"I would not compromise my standards just to sell a house," she said. "I'm not one to stick anybody anywhere. I've always wanted to do something that's positive."

"Everybody has the right to live somewhere nice and decent and safe."

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