Harney founded Keeping Current Matters in 2007 to help agents and homeowners prepare for the coming financial crisis.
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Steve Harney, a leader in real estate coaching for decades, passed away unexpectedly on Sunday, March 4 at the age of 68.
Harney is the founder of real estate consulting firm Keeping Current Matters, which he launched in 2007 to help educate agents and consumers ahead of the financial crisis.
“It was during the housing crisis, and Steve’s vision was to help agents understand what was going on in the world,” Keeping Current Matters CEO Dave Childers told Inman in an interview . “KCM was born out of the 2008 crisis and is truly committed to helping homeowners get through it.”
Born in the Bronx in 1955, Haney began his career as a real estate agent in 1983 in Suffolk County, New York. During his time as an agent, he has been consistently ranked nationally and is one of the top-selling agents in Suffolk County.
Haney eventually assumed leadership of Prudential Real Estate’s largest office in 1991, which led him to train Prudential agents all over the East Coast, his first attempt at training and educating his fellow agents.
After four years at the helm of Prudential, Haney founded his own brokerage, National HomeFinders, which grew to a 500-agent brokerage before being sold by Haney in 2005.
Soon after, he founded Keeping Current Matters with the hope of helping agents prepare for the rough waters ahead, specifically by providing them with the information, analysis and data they need to help homeowners.
Marc Davison, co-founder of the creative agency 1000watt and a friend of Haney’s, said: “Steve just needed to do the right thing by having an industry that was good for him.” “The guy was an agent. He managed Being an agent for a long time, I think when you manage an agent long enough, your heart is there.”
Friends said that while Haney educated agents on simple matters such as data, some of the most valuable insights they gained from him were about ethics and the importance of doing the right thing for others.
“I’ve never seen anyone take such a deep look at data, brokerage, broker psychology, broker mentality and real estate history,” Davidson said. “Others may have a lot of those traits, but Steve also had this innate passion or ethics that I knew came from his father.”
Harney sold Keeping Current Matters to his sons, Bill and Charlotte Harney, in 2016, but remains involved as a founder of the company and at (formerly Twitter) social media platform where he frequently posts about housing issues.
Childers said Keeping Current Matters plans to continue spreading the word about Harney’s mission of helping consumers make informed decisions in the real estate market.
“When you walk into our office in Richmond, Virginia, you’ll see a wall that says, ‘Every family deserves confidence when buying or selling a home,'” he said. “That’s what drives what we do every day – our mission to help every family feel confident.”
Haney is survived by his wife, Kathy; his sons Bill, Steven and Kevin; his grandsons Graham and McRae; and his siblings Joan Uzzi, Michael Haney and Ricky Haney.
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