Editorial
Front Page - Friday, December 3, 2010
Realtor shares her love and experience of selling homes
Erica Tuggle
Ann Dendy, a Realtor and associate broker with Prudential Realty of Ft. Oglethorpe, is an avid golfer and bridge player. She has filled her office with photos of her family, including her five beautiful grandchildren, and of her awards throughout the years including her recognition of “Most Professional” for her office for two years running.
- Erica Tuggle
Without a moment’s hesitation, Ann Dendy will tell you what she loves about her life. With this type of readiness some would call Dendy assertive; others have named her the most professional Realtor of her office and the “Dendy manner” is one that has put her ahead as a consistent multi-million dollar producer, sales agent of the year for her North Georgia office for six years and named her listing agent of the year in 2009.
Dendy was born in Rossville and has lived there most of her life, battling the ups and downs of real estate since 1972. Licensed in both Georgia and Tennessee since then, this makes her the longest licensed agent in North Georgia that she knows of.
Dendy has always sold something since she has been in this world, she says. She first started real estate by helping several people selling and buying meet up, and from there she thought she might as well get paid to do this and thus joined the very first class they had at Georgia Northwestern Technical College, then called Walker Tech.
She’s dabbled in many areas of real estate since this beginning, even owning her own company for a period of time, working as a broker and now as an associate broker and agent with Prudential Realty of Ft. Oglethorpe.
Dendy says when she went into real estate full-time in 1980, the interest rates were 17 and 18 percent and have been full circle till now when they are lower than when she bought her own house, she jokes, “a hundred years ago.”
“I’ve seen a little bit of everything, but nothing like it has been the past two or three years,” she says. “But I love what I do and am working now with the children of people I have sold to, so that is a fun thing to do.”
For Dendy, her business is all referrals. She doesn’t knock on doors, but instead people call her and she says she loves to help them when they do.
She admits she didn’t enjoy her role as a broker as much as she thought she would, because although she liked having her name out on a sign and her own office, she realized that back then a broker had to do quite a lot to keep things running. She says she is proud of her broker’s license and is not going to give it up, although she doesn’t think she will be going out on her own again.
“My best thing is selling, but when you are the broker you have to sit behind the desk and do this and that, and I did better getting away from that,” she says.
Dendy’s list of accolades over the years has steadily grown, but there’s no real secret to how she has accomplished so much, she says. She just, “keeps on keeping on.”
“If you are in the business and you work at it, you are going to do well or else you need to get out of it, plain and simple,” she says. “Over the years, I have been very lucky, knock on wood, and God has been very good to me and sent a lot of people [in] my direction that I was able to help.
“Just the fact that I have been here the number of years I have is the best thing because I get repeat business and people I have helped send me folks, and for a few years it was really wonderful.”
Even though real estate now is comparable to the years prior to those wonderful years she has had, she says everybody in the business is dealing with the same conditions and she is thankful to have had those really good years and made fantastic friends in the process.
She says the award she is most proud of is the one she has been given for most professional agent for the years 1999, 2000, 2002, 2008 and 2009. She says she thinks this is about the highest honor an agent can receive.
Dendy also has no hesitation when asked her favorite pastime. Resoundingly, she says if she is not on the computer doing real estate, she is on the computer playing bridge. She has also been in a bridge club for 40 years that plays every other week.
“I play bridge all day long if I let myself,” she says.
Dendy says she also plays golf in her free time and likes to talk about the “light of her life”: her five beautiful grandchildren.
Whether it is her grandchildren, playing bridge, or the love of selling she has, you can bet Dendy is not hesitating
one moment.
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