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Broker Spotlight: Hilary Farnum-Fasth, Corcoran Reverie
Name: Hilary Farnum-Fasth
Title: Broker and owner
Experience: Licensed since 1997 and has always been in the high-end luxury development, investment and new construction side of real estate
Location: Northwest Florida, spanning from Destin to Panama City Beach, and Nashville, Tennessee. I predominately sell the area commonly known as 30A.
Brokerage name: Corcoran Reverie
Rankings:
- Ranked in the Top 2 for closed sales volume among all teams within the Emerald Coast Association of Realtors for 2022
- Ranked in the Top 5 for closed sales volume among all members of the Emerald Coast Association of Realtors for 2022
Team size: 2
Transaction sides:
- Lifetime: Over 800
- 2022: 78 sides
- 2021: 183 sides
Sales volume:
- Lifetime: Over $1.1 billion
- 2022: $213 million-plus
- 2021: $485 million-plus
Awards:
- Woman of the Year 2022
- Ranked No. 31 among all small teams in the country for Real Trends The Thousand 2022
- Ranked No. 9 2022 RealTrends America’s Best Real Estate Professionals
Why/how did you get your start in real estate?
I graduated from Florida State University as a marketing major and started working in Destin, Florida, at Regatta Bay as a marketing assistant under Peter Bos as he was developing and building that community. I firmly told him I had no interest in real estate sales — I was there to be in marketing.
Peter identified something in me very early on, and little did I know what was going to happen next. He said, “Yeah, I know you don’t want to sell, but just get licensed so if someone walks in they are talking to someone licensed.” At the time, that made perfect sense to my 23-year-old self.
About a week after I was licensed, a salesperson for the community left, and Peter looked and me and said you’re moving to sales, and the rest is, well, history! I mentored under a brilliant developer and fell in love with development and new construction.
Regatta Bay let me to launch the WaterColor Inn and working with St. Joe opened the doors for working onsite at WaterSound Beach which led to everything else I have done in my career. I have never not done Luxury, new development or new construction, so I bring something very unique to my investors and clients.
My knowledge of the area literally goes back to when it was dirt. I know all the roads, all the infrastructure, which allows me to speak to that in a way very few can.
What do you wish more people knew about working in real estate?
To be successful and have longevity in this as a career, you must approach real estate as you would owning a brick-and-mortar business: You are the CEO of your company.
To be successful you can’t really do real estate part-time. It’s like if you wanted to open a cupcake shop — you find the perfect space and have the perfect cupcake — you don’t just open your doors and hope someone comes in and buys your cupcake.
You don’t bake cupcakes for a week then take a vacation. You know you are going to be getting up early every day for at least five years to bake cupcakes, you are going to tell all your friends, bring them samples, host events, push out social media. You are going to invest in your business so that your friends tell their friends, and it grows into something sustainable.
You know it is going to take time, there will be tears and there will the triumphs. You work hard and make sure your goals are set every year, you have a business plan and a budget.
Real estate done right is the same thing, and the rewards are equally as great. It’s the one career that builds on itself and provides an income level for many years past the typical retirement norms and rewards you in the long term with continued business.
Top 5 things to know about you and your brokerage:
- I am an expert at connecting and able to help build clients’ wealth thru real estate investing. It goes back to my longevity in the industry, specifically the niche of luxury real estate that has allowed me to thrive at knowing the market, identifying opportunities to present to my clients and negotiating the deal successfully.
- Both myself and the brokerage specialize in new construction development — we build our own real estate through planned communities and new construction homes and developments. It’s something few other brokerages can say. This allows us to offer our agents connectivity for inventory in an unparalleled way.
- I have an authentic desire to mentor and build others’ businesses. By being willing to share and give of myself in a way that benefits the agent more than me, it has allowed me to see growth in my company and laid the foundation of our company culture and what we wanted to change in the real estate industry.
- Corcoran Reverie offers mentoring and training at the highest level for agents of all levels. New agents and seasoned veterans are going to find high-touch, first-class training and service for their businesses to be successful with a leadership team that is available and willing to help them at a moment’s notice. We are thoroughly invested in our agents and their successes.
- Everyone touts technology as their value proposition and of course, we offer incredible technology for our agents that is equal or better than our competitors. At Corcoran Reverie, rather than leading with only the technology that we have, we highlight this amazing and vibrant culture that we share because the culture is what matters to us. Technology is easy, everyone can have it, and we do but you can’t subscribe to or create culture we have at Reverie – it is unparallel and largely unheard of to have what we have in our industry.
What’s something you know now that you wish you knew when you started?
To have a real true CRM (with all the drips and campaigns), and to put everyone I have ever met into it and use it every single day. It not only allows you to have all your contacts in one place (which is amazing), but also the connectivity over the years to your sphere is priceless.
I think about how many more people I could have served, and where that could have taken my career, had I had those services available to me then or had I taken full advantage of them. Today, we have every tool known to man and some agents still don’t leverage them, which to me makes zero sense.
Tell us about a high point in your brokerage career
Affiliating with Corcoran and being able to grow the brokerage to over double in size within the first year without losing our culture was the highlight of my career thus far.
It was honestly a little crazy that it happened at all, but then to not lose who we were fundamentally and to see us thriving after such a dramatic shift — even though it was for the better, it was still dramatic — and to launch Corcoran Reverie successfully in the beginning of COVID amidst the shutdown was incredible.
Since then, we have seen agents double and triple (and even beyond that) in their businesses because we mentored them — which has also been a highlight of my career. It’s what you want for your family — for the next generation to be even better than you are. That is what we want for Corcoran Reverie — for our agents’ success to far outmatch ours. What a legacy that will be.
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