Remembered as opinionated and knowledgeable
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – Jay Lamont, 76, a longtime Ocean City resident, real estate adviser, radio talk-show host and founder of the Real Estate Institute at Temple University, died Aug. 21 after a long battle with cancer at Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Joe Lamont said his cousin was battling cancer and had lost a lot of weight but knew what was going on with the piping-hot real estate market in Ocean City.
“He found it hard to believe. He was still pretty sharp but his body was giving out on him,” Joe Lamont said. “He was a big guy and really wasting away.”
He said Lamont was well known to island real estate agents as well as the general public.
“A lot of the residents and people down here, I get asked all the time about Jay, people saying they miss his program,” Joe said. “Even the agents down here ask me all the time about him. He was a big influence on a lot of people.”
Lamont’s radio show, “All About Real Estate,” was broadcast on WPEN-AM for 31 years, from November 1978 to September 2009. Lamont shared his vast knowledge and irascible personality with callers from the greater Philadelphia metro region to the Jersey shore.
“It was like going to church, like gospel to them. People couldn’t wait for Sunday to listen to him,” Joe said. “He had a strong impact in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the early part of the 2000s.”
He said his cousin’s teachings remain relevant today.
“A lot of his beliefs have carried on. Location, location, location — I never heard about that until he started preaching it. ‘A place you rent is a house and a place you own is a home,’” Joe said.
In 1973, Lamont partnered with Temple to create the Real Estate Institute to help industry professionals succeed. He wrote real estate columns for the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Magazine and was a real estate and financial commentator for KYW-TV.
Lamont specialized in vacation homes and was a sought-after speaker for conventions. In October 1978, Time-Life Inc. and Money Magazine named him one of the nation’s top real estate investment teachers.
Joe Lamont said his cousin had a lasting effect on the real estate industry in Ocean City.
“Even well-known realtors down here think the world of him and took his word as gospel,” he said.
Joe said his family started visiting Ocean City in the 1960s and followed his cousin to the island in 1969, when he bought his first home at 5248 Asbury Ave.
“He built that in 1969 and the rest is history, he had properties all over this island,” Joe Lamont said.
Joe said he attended the Real Estate Institute with local agent Mike Contino of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Fox & Roach Realtors.
“He was a mentor for me back in the day when I was a young guy,” Contino said, noting he listened to two real estate radio shows, on Saturdays with Russ Miller and Sundays with Lamont.
“We listened to those religiously and I learned a heck of a lot. The following he had on the radio was phenomenal,” Contino said.
He described Lamont as a burly guy with a bald head and beard who had a gregarious personality and a great memory.
“Whenever he talked about a property or a person, he went into detail. He knew a lot about the person, where they’re from and he had a lot of insight on different things,” Contino said.
But he also said Lamont didn’t pull any punches.
“People listened because he was so knowledgeable in every area, whether it was Chester County, Delaware County, Montgomery County, Philadelphia and the Jersey shore. He knew every island, and he wasn’t afraid to give his opinion,” Contino said, noting Lamont’s opinions sometimes ruffled feathers. “He told people not to invest in Atlantic City, it was a toilet. That’s the things that irked people some of the times because he was a little too direct.”
In another example, he said Lamont disliked Wildwood and advised people not to invest there.
“He would argue on the phone with the mayor of Wildwood and he always used to say the best thing that Wildwood Crest and North Wildwood could do is change their name and not be associated with Wildwood,” Contino said.
“He was very, very, very opinionated, and he would tell you like it was,” said John Walton of Keller Williams Jersey Shore. “He would tell you what it was, from Brigantine all the way down to Cape May.”
Lamont knew all of the ins and outs of real estate transactions and used them to his benefit, but also shared them with his listeners.
Contino said he first heard about the 1031 tax exchange from Lamont. The IRS allows the owner of a property to sell one property by using 100 percent proceeds from the sale of the property to buy another property without having to pay capital gains taxes on the transaction.
“My father didn’t believe me but I told him Jay Lamont said this is what you can do and I proved him wrong,” Contino said. “If you paid attention to what he said — and sometimes he got a little ornery with people or intolerant — but if you listened to him, you learned a heck of a lot.”
Contino said Lamont also was famous in his day for buying a property with his name on it and a sentence that says “and/or signee,” which means prior to closing he could assign that contract to somebody else for a profit.
“And he had done that numerous times in his day. The caveat to all of that, on the day of closing you have to show up with the money. If the signee doesn’t show up, you have to buy the property,” he said.
Contino said he took Lamont’s class at Temple just for knowledge and education, not to get a real estate license, in 1980.
“I wanted to learn about real estate so that when I invested, I knew what I was doing,” Contino said. “I reconnected with him down here and he liked to brag that I was one of his students because he saw how successful I was.”
Contino said he and Lamont would often go to dinner in Somers Point and “have great conversations about real estate and about life.”
Walton said he and Lamont are both from the Upper Darby, Pa., area and he knew Jay from his radio show. They reconnected when he moved to the island. He said Lamont’s stepson Collin Kelly joined his team. Through that connection, Walton’s team did a live segment for the radio show.
“I really was a big fan, a huge fan. I used to record it,” Walton said. “I used to love it. It was entertaining and informative.”
Walton said every third caller was inquiring about Ocean City and that Lamont took the time to evaluate a block, a neighborhood.
“He knew value, he knew rentals. He was absolutely opinionated and there were certain streets that he didn’t like, certain neighborhoods that he didn’t like,” Walton said. “He was the eyes and the ears for everybody.
In 1989, Lamont bought the iconic Waterfront Restaurant in Somers Point, a favorite of locals and tourists alike.
“People ask me all the time about the Waterfront, saying they loved it so much. It was a great spot,” Joe Lamont said. “He used to have bands there all the time, it was a fun family place.”
Lamont also owned the club across Bay Avenue, which he named Crazy Jane’s after Joe’s sister.
“In college, she ran a radio program and that was her persona,” Joe said. “And she had a wild and crazy personality.”
Berkshire Hathaway agent Mark Grimes, who worked for Lamont at the Waterfront in the late 1980s, said he turned it into a great hangout with a reggae band on the deck.
“They had great baby back ribs, that’s what I remember,” Grimes said, adding that he also admired Lamont for his real estate prowess.
“He was legendary. The guy was very knowledgeable in the real estate market. He could answer all questions about real estate, any aspect,” Grimes said. “He was very unique, just an iconic guy, one of a kind I guess you could say,” Grimes said.