Real estate newcomer makes career, family gamble in Northwest Arkansas

Kentucky native Stephen Brooks was headed north in his corporate marketing career with Chick-Fil-A when he jumped off the bandwagon and ventured south to Fayetteville to launch a career in real estate.

The 31-year-old Brooks, a Keller Williams agent, said he felt a strong desire to “steer his own destiny” and had always wanted to be a real estate professional, but took the salary and corporate job with travel opportunities directly out of college.

And although he could be in the real estate market anywhere, In July 2013, Brooks and his pregnant wife Kimberlee, packed and moved to Fayetteville from Lexington, Ky. They had just enough money for four months of expenses,  

HOOKED AT FIRST SIGHT
“We had visited the city only once — earlier that year — driving in from Texas one weekend when I was still with Chick-Fil-A. I had finished my online (real estate) training but still had not taken my exam for licensure when we moved here,” Brooks said. “It was a clear leap of faith.”

The couple researched smaller metro areas that offered a great quality of life and outdoors offerings. Brooks is an avid cyclist. The area also needed a vibrant real estate market and be located within a day’s drive of their families in Kentucky and Texas.

“Fayetteville kept coming up in our searches online as an award winner time and time again. The whole region, in fact, looked to be a positive place to start a business in real estate, even though I didn’t know a soul,” Brooks said.
 
Brooks said the day he and Kimberlee drove up from Texas they were hooked after a three-hour, self-guided tour through Fayetteville.

“The view coming in from the South is amazing. We took the Cato Springs Road exit and wound up at Walker Park where we picnicked. We found Dickson Street and took College Avenue out to Johnson and back around Lake Fayetteville. We loved the feel of the city and we didn’t even really know about the rest of the region at that point,” Brooks said.

The couple relocated to Fayetteville a few months later and he passed his license exam in August and signed on with Keller Williams. Their son Titus was born in February.

KELLER WILLIAMS DRAW
Brooks said the timing of his move coincided with a franchise ownership shift at Keller Williams in Northwest Arkansas. He said a friend referred him to Keller Williams and he felt that national brand could provide the training and mentorship a young agent needed, but allow him the marketing flexibility to building his own name brand simultaneously.

The local franchise continues to grow with roughly 150 agents, which are split between offices in Fayetteville and Bentonville. 

“We have just about 8% of the agent count in the region, but in the past year we have grown to roughly 25% of the business in the market,” Brooks said.

A number of top performing agents have left other firms to join Keller Williams in the past year including Nicky and Jerry Dou, Joseph Hayes and J. Pat Newland.

“Keller Williams is a great place for eager agents to work because they allow us to promote our own brand which is important for entrepreneurs,” Brooks said. “They have favorable payouts which also allows agents to invest more into their business. It’s a good fit for me.”

FROM THE GROUND UP
Knowing no one when he started his business last year, Brooks set out to meet as many people as he could by staging and working open houses for other agents. 

“In my career at Chick-Fil-A, I staged events and worked with local marketing teams so open houses were a natural for me. I also set out to create different experiences for my sellers setting high expectations and aggressively marketing their properties,” Brooks said.

Those early goals proved fruitful as the average days on market for Brooks’ listings (35 days) are roughy one-third the time of the market average at 110 days, he said.

“It took me two months to close my first sale and I am on track to close 30 transactions this year. That’s in line with my goal, but my income is better than projected because there were more higher prices sales,” Brooks said.

For 2015, Brooks believes he will close 60 transactions and said 80% of his sales have come in the past six months, each better than the last. In September, Brooks won the top sales award for closings that month among the local franchise. 

“That was exciting. I certainly didn’t expect it given the top producing agents in our company,” Brooks said. “I recently added a part-time administrative assistant to help coordinate the paperworks for timely closings.”

Brooks said he didn’t have to look far for the right candidate — his dad — who also recently also moved to Fayetteville from Kentucky and is semiretired.

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY
One area niche to which Brooks is drawn is investment property. He said the power of homes as investments have always interested him.

“I established a local real estate investment club that meets once a month at the Fayetteville Chamber offices. It’s a networking and learning resource for current and potential investors,” Brooks said.

Interest in the group is growing, he said. The club meets the third Thursday of each month at 6 p.m.

He said the largest deal he’s done is a pending sale of a 16-complex rental property in Fayetteville for an investor owner in California. He said the rental market in Fayetteville is strong and the properties can be picked up more easily there by smaller investors than in Bentonville, which is another hot market for rentals.

He said there are 45 rental listings in Fayetteville and just 12 in Bentonville.

“About a third of my business is investor related,” Brooks said.

One of the things he loves most about living and growing his business in Northwest Arkansas is the sense of community.

“It extends well beyond Fayetteville. There are seven or eight unique communities in this region from Prairie Grove to Bella Vista, each somewhat culturally different and I love that aspect of Northwest Arkansas. It was unexpected as a newcomer,” Brooks said.