CR Magazine - Winter 2016

Continued from page 11
Matt graduated from Michigan
State with a degree in Hotel
Restaurant and Institutional
Management. He worked for
Marshall Fields as a manager,
and then for one of the original
partners of Lettuce Entertain You.
Eventually, he began to burn out,
and turned his attention to wine.
But before he could switch from
restaurants to selling wine, his
father talked him into going into
packaging sales together.
Matt Silver's family: Grant Silver, son, David Silver, brother,
Marlene Silver, mother, Verne Silver, father, and Matt.
After ten years, he found himself struggling to break
the six figure mark. His wife at the time, who has Crohns
disease, sometimes was too sick to get out of bed; per
Matt’s dedication to family, he wanted to find a career that
allowed him to be around to help her if something was
wrong. And true to his father Verne’s favorite saying, “Good
luck is the result of hard work,” he went on a series of over
200 informational interviews – everything from medical
device sales to real estate. Following several different
informational interviews on the commercial side, Matt got
excited again.
“I had this, ‘Oh my God, I can crush this,’ moment,” he said.
“I knew that you could earn a really solid living, and what
I liked most was that it could be done the way I wanted
to do it. I remember saying that I didn’t want to get put in
a room to smile and dial. I wanted to problem solve, be
stimulated, and get really creative with it.”
Although Matt eventually then made the jump to residential
real estate, he still has a soft spot for commercial. “It’s very
rare for a residential sector to do well without commercial
offerings,” he stresses. “And, no one wants to live in a strictly
commercial area. Commercial is very important to me.”
His residential career began at Rubloff, under the
mentorship of Jim Kinney. “For the first few weeks, Jim
would sit with me and we went over every contract, every
piece of paper, every sale – any detail I might need to know,”
Matt said. “It was an interesting time to be in the business
because we were switching from books that were printed
every day to computers.” Technology, he notes, that has
actually made the job of a broker easier, and gives them
opportunity to provide even stronger service to clients.
“Real estate has never felt like work to me,” Matt said.
“It’s the culmination of every job I’ve had in my lifetime –
particularly at Rubloff, where I was in my element and I
could rise rapidly.”
After Rubloff sold, Matt switched to @properties for a
brief time – they were expanding to the North Shore, and
they were a new perspective for the market. And then the
market crashed. “For a period, it was as if everything in my
life was saying ‘time for a change!’” Matt said. “I was on the
board, going through a divorce, the market was tanking…
and I reevaluated everything.”
It was at this point that he met Matt Farrell, a fellow C.A.R.
board member. They hit it off, and Matt made the switch to
the growing boutique firm, Urban Real Estate – a “mutually
beneficial” decision. After a year there, he began talks with
Matt and Michael Emery about becoming a partner. Two
years ago, it became a reality.
“And it’s been incredible,” Matt said. “I love what we do, and
our dedication to doing it in the most elegant way.”
Matt and his business partner,
Michael Emery, Urban Real Estate.
Elegance, after all, is one of Matt’s trademarks, right
alongside professionalism. It’s a trait he wants to
encourage membership to embrace this year. “The people
I know in this business are hardworking, dedicated, sincere,”
he said. “This is true in all 77 neighborhoods. It’s incredible
12 Chicago REALTOR ® Magazine