The Origin Story of Hale Properties
My experience in the real estate business started back in 2004, when I bought my first investment property. As I was going through the buying process, I found that online information about making smart investments in real estate was extremely limited, but I wanted to learn as much as I could to be a better investor. That was how I came to the decision to earn my real estate license.
I grew up watching my mother build her dental practice to better serve her patients, and I knew that I would want to follow her lead and own a real estate brokerage someday. New real estate licensees are still required to have an experienced broker hold their license for at least two years before becoming an independently licensed broker. So, from 2005–07, I worked for a friend’s father’s brokerage to meet that requirement while continuing to work at my mother’s dental practice, Omega Dental Care, as well. During those two years, I saw the emergence of a lot of technologies that I could use as a realtor to connect with clients without going through a big brokerage with a lot of employees. For the first time, smart phones allowed us to access secure listings without the use of additional cumbersome and bulky hardware. Digital photography, videography, and 3D walking tours allowed us to market property in new and innovative ways. Property specific webpages for our listings could now be generated for pennies on the dollar, and email, text, and other online resources made it easier and more cost-effective for me to connect with clients directly. With that in mind, I finished up my two years at the brokerage and struck out on my own. Hale Properties, Inc. was born.
For around 10 years, I worked as a real estate broker and continued to help out at Omega Dental Care. For much of that time, my wife, Maggie, and I talked about choosing to pursue one or the other full time. Working solely in real estate would mean that I could give more attention to my clients, but I was so busy at the dental clinic that I wasn’t sure how to make the transition. Then came the lack swan event of our lives: in December 2017, my wife gave birth to identical triplet girls. Having children is always life-changing, but going immediately from zero kids to three meant I had to make a pretty big decision about how to best to allocate my time, and provide for our newest family members. Two years ago, I decided to dedicate my time to the real estate brokerage full time. Thanks to awesome friends, repeat clients, and trusted referrals, the decision has paid off.
Client challenges are my challenges, but it is always rewarding. Whether working with buyers or sellers, no two listings are the same. We are marketing our clients’ homes in
an environment where buyers’ time and their representatives’ time to focus is limited, and buyers often feel overwhelmed. This creates a unique opportunity to connect with them in person. Although the convenience of online scheduling tools allows sellers to efficiently approve or reschedule showing requests, we, as the listing broker, always reach out personally to showing agents to highlight verbally and in person the unique features and selling points of our clients’ homes. We still use the best technology on the planet to highlight these benefits, but nothing can replace a phone call or personal private tour of a home by the representative that knows the home features best.
Despite the challenges, there is nothing as rewarding as helping a client buy or sell a home, and the advances in technology that got Hale Properties started keep us competitive. There have been multiple occasions where I’ve used FaceTime to help clients tour homes when they couldn’t make it in person, saving them time and money, and that’s just one example. That said, we never let that tech get in the way of forming personal connections with our clients throughout the homebuying process.
At Hale Properties, we operate where technological efficiency and personability meet, and we strive to help our clients feel comfortable and informed throughout the entire homebuying process.
~Fritz Soberay
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