Matthew Macaulay grew up in a city that inspired grand dreams and then swallowed them whole.
Born in Manchester, England, and reared in London, Macaulay learned to think big at a young age. He watched his grandfather turn his trade as a hairdresser into a chain of high-end salons that stretched across the city, he joined his father and the epic crowds at Old Trafford in cheering on Manchester United and he eschewed his studies and immersed himself in an ocean of music, where Van Morrison, Mike and the Mechanics and Dire Straits released songs that lured him like chanting sirens into deep waters.
By 18 years of age, Macaulay was hoping to leave his own mark on the world through music, he says.
It seemed to him that Sydney, Australia, would be a good place to start, Macaulay adds. He had a random connection at a college in the city and believed the school offered an excellent opportunity to advance his craft, so he struck a deal with his father that allowed him to go.
“I told him I’d take the A-Level exams if he would then let me do what I wanted to do,” remembers Macaulay, 40. “Looking back, my parents were crazy to let me move to the other side of the world when I was 18.”
Macaulay speaks softly as he rotates a cup of coffee at Burlaep Print and Press on East 11th Street in downtown Chattanooga. Although he’s lived in the U.S. since 2015, his native English accent remains unspoiled.
“When people ask me where I’m from, I tell them Soddy Daisy,” he smiles. “Some people get it; some people don’t.”
Macaulay studied music and theology in Australia and then returned to London after graduating. He was working in sports retail when a family friend who’d helped to sign the Spice Girls and was working for classical label Decca Records offered him a job as his assistant.
It was an open door, so Macaulay stepped through it.
Macaulay was primarily interested in writing and performing what he calls “church music” and what many Christian congregations in the U.S. think of as worship music. The opportunity to enter that space professionally came when his friend introduced him to the single-monikered Kipper, who was producing for Sting. Macaulay and Kipper hit it off and the producer assembled a deal for him to record his first album.
“That was fun because he wasn’t familiar with the church music space,” Macaulay recalls.
Macaulay titled the album “As for Me” and released it in 2008. In the years that followed, he toured, released a second album and segued into writing songs for other Christian artists. However, his efforts to wring a sustainable career out of the industry wore him down, he says.
“It was fun but it’s a tiring industry after a while.”
Even so, Macaulay was far from done with music.
Pray Chattanooga
Macaulay’s first role after arriving in the Scenic City in 2015 with a wife and daughter in tow involved working for Pray Chattanooga, a nonprofit that brings cloistered churches together to focus on shared ministries and creating a sense of a larger local church.
Pray Chattanooga brought in Macaulay to spearhead the development of a creative network called The Union. At the height of this endeavor, Macaulay and his colleagues were supporting songwriters, musicians and worship leaders from close to 50 Chattanooga churches.
“We did a lot of pastoral support of artists. It can be a lonely space. A lot of churches in Chattanooga have historically been siloed, and to see people achieve a vision for the bigger, capital ‘C’ church was fun.”
A sense of purpose enveloped Macaulay when he realized he was leaving his mark on Chattanooga through his creativity. The scale of his work might have been smaller than he’d envisioned when he arrived in Sydney, but he could see the difference he was making in the lives of others.
“Coming from a large and well-established city where it’s hard to leave your fingerprints on something, Chattanooga has felt like a blank canvas,” Macaulay muses. “And this has been a special time to be here. I’ve had a genuine opportunity to impact local culture and see the things I touch change in a way that will define the fabric of this community for years to come.”
As Macaulay worked with Pray Chattanooga, a friend with local builder Blue Hammer Homes noted that he was not only adept at building relationships but also loved connecting with other people. So, when Macaulay needed to shift his focus in 2020, his friend suggested he’d thrive in real estate.
Macaulay was skeptical at first. “I didn’t have a grid for it,” he says, meaning he lacked familiarity with the profession.
No problem, Macaulay’s friend said before connecting him with Keller Williams agent Rachel Bruner. Macaulay credits Bruner with standing him up and helping him to take his first steps as a Realtor.
“She’s a remarkable and generous human being.”
Soon, Macaulay was showing houses for his fellow agents. He recommends it as an effective way to warm up to home sales. “I showed houses for $25 each,” he says. “The most I did in one day was 13.”
Agents and buyers alike responded to Macaulay’s work ethic, even as he tried to establish a proper balance between his demanding new career and his family.
“I worked hard because I cared. I might have cared a bit too much, actually, but figuring out where my boundaries lie with my clients wasn’t easy. A Realtor is always on – and I took that seriously. I still do.”
Four months after earning his license, Macaulay closed his first three sales, making his crash course in real estate a solid success. Since then, he’s launched Macaulay Property Group, set up shop at eXp Realty and refined his business plan to concentrate on luxury homes.
This new venture has proven to be an exciting undertaking for both Macaulay and his clients.
Lap of luxury
“I love working with beautiful product,” Macaulay says. “Figuring out a way to bring a nice home to life and market it well appeals to my creative side.”
Luxury homes also are presently appealing to buyers, or at least enough of them to warrant the concentrated efforts of agents like Macaulay. While the city has always had its ritzier residences, he says the market for million-dollar and higher homes in the area is still fairly new.
“There wasn’t much luxury product in Chattanooga 10 years ago,” Macaulay contends. “But a lot of money from out of state has been pouring into the area, and that’s shifted the mentality of builders. Since the demand is there, they feel confident in increasing the supply.”
Macaulay says his flair for developing relationships has paid off in this new arena, although he credits his daughter with making sure he was in the right place at the right time to land a lucrative listing in August.
The house in question is part of the Flipper Bend community of extravagant homes in Signal Mountain. A video on Macaulay’s social media shows off the home’s elegant modern aesthetic, open floor plan and spacious rooms in a series of accelerated and slow-motion clips. It ends with Macaulay taking a seat (and a sip from a cup) on an upper deck overlooking Mountain Laurel Trail as a drone retreats to capture the complete exterior with its camera.
The video was part of the work Macaulay did to tell the home’s story to potential buyers. However, he might never have had the opportunity to sit on the deck and drink his mystery liquid if his daughter hadn’t forced the opportunity to meet the seller.
“She had just finished cross-country practice and was moaning for a Powerade. I drove by the first two gas stations in a bid to get home, and she started moaning louder, so I pulled into a Mapco on Highway 153, which is the last one before home,” Macaulay recounts.
“The seller and I started chatting as we stood in line and then met for lunch the following week. He’d had a relationship with another agent who’d been unable to sell it over the course of about 100 days and gave me a shot at it. We had it under contract within the first week.”
The video begins with an introduction by Macaulay, whose sophisticated accent fits the setting as snug as a David Attenborough voice-over for a nature documentary. This brings up a question he says more than a few people have asked since he started selling luxury homes: Does having an English accent help?
“At this point, I have to say, ‘Guilty as charged,’” he laughs. “I don’t have evidence to prove otherwise.”
The Flipper Bend video wasn’t the first time Macaulay’s accent has been enlisted in service of elevating a situation. When his daughter’s school asked if he’d narrate the introduction to its production of ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” for example, he said yes.
“One of the dads came up to me afterward and said, ‘You sounded like a 70-year-old narrator.’ I think it alerts people’s senses.”
Macaulay says his accent can also confuse people.
“We have a long list of interesting replies that have come back over drive-thru speakers after I tried to order food. So, we went through a phase when my wife and daughter placed our orders.”
Family Guy
Although wrestling food from a drive-thru often required more work than the Brit-born Macaulay would have liked, he was pleased to be with his wife, the California-born Micah, who serves as the worship pastor at Mission Chattanooga, and his 15-year-old daughter, the aforementioned cross-country contender.
The youthful runner might have inherited her athletic genes from her father, who loved to play cricket as a boy and presently enjoys golf and fishing when he can fit them into his usually packed schedule.
Macaulay does carve out time to enjoy sports as a spectator, although he’s hesitant to mention his current passion. Much like Manchester United is widely scorned, he experiences no small amount of playful animosity whenever he mentions he’s a Dallas Cowboys fan.
“No one here likes the Cowboys,” he shrugs.
Other than the expected blowback when he cheers on Dak Prescott and company, Chattanooga has been good to him, Macaulay says.
“I feel like it would have been hard for me to start a business in London and in four years build it to the quality of my business here,” he says. “I’m grateful for the kind people we’ve met and the opportunities we’ve had since we moved here.”
Macaulay also still carries vestiges of the grand dream his musical idols – as well as London – once inspired. Evidence will arrive in the coming months when he releases a new song inspired by his daughter titled “Stealing Stars.”
Music will likely always be a part of Macaulay’s life, even as he continues to focus on his new career, because it’s not just a business but also an expression of his faith, he says.
“Congregational church music has a specific function, and you need to work within certain parameters, so how do you express your faith but also connect with a wider community? And how do you help that community express its faith? I enjoy that process.”