Amazing things sometimes happen as a matter of coincidence.
So marveled Realtor Heidi Rau when a bald eagle landed on a nearby tree during a rainstorm and challenged her to a stare-down as she relaxed at Holly Park in Soddy-Daisy after a listing appointment.
“I laughed about how this bald eagle was fine with flying through a storm to sit and stare at me,” Rau recalls. “We had a profound moment together.”
Rau’s avian encounter occurred one week before she and her partner in RE/MAX Preferred Properties – a new real estate brokerage in Chattanooga – took possession of their office on Broad Street. When Rau shared her sFtory with her new business associate, Lee Linhart of Hendersonville, North Carolina, later that day, he all but shouted through his phone.
“He said, ‘Heidi, that’s crazy. While I was waiting to pass through the gate into my neighborhood, a golden eagle perched on a tree next to me – and we just looked at each other.”
One eagle is a coincidence. But what about two eagles? On the same day. In different states. Rau has thoughts about that.
‘That dude is my energy’
Since 2022, Rau has focused her thoughts on the stable of agents at RE/MAX Ambassadors, the Ooltewah brokerage she opened when the person in charge of regional franchising asked her if she’d be interested in helping the company expand in the Chattanooga area. At the time, she was leading a small team at Keller Williams. As the owner and broker of Ambassadors, Rau focused on developing her agents and enabling their productivity.
Rau’s transition to partner in Preferred Properties began with another chance meeting – one that did not involve birds of prey.
“I went to a RE/MAX conference in 2022. Since it was the first big conference I’d attended, I didn’t know anyone,” Rau begins. “I was trying to feel the room when I spotted Lee talking with some people. I thought, ‘That dude is my energy. I’m going to talk with him.’ And I struck up a conversation with him.”
At the time, Linhart owned eight RE/MAX offices throughout the southeast. Although Rau was already cast as the teacher at Ambassadors, she was eager to play the role of student under Linhart’s tutelage.
“He gave me notes on how to get started in Ooltewah,” Rau says. “So, this has been a friendship and a business relationship in the making for the past three years.”
Linhart says he was thrilled to help Rau as she took her first steps from agent to owner. He’d walked the same path while working with his mother at the boutique brokerage she owned in Hendersonville and later leaving that operation to binge buy RE/MAX offices throughout the Southeast (including Knoxville, Seymour, Sevierville, Morristown, Johnson City and more), and had the wisdom that comes from experience to offer.
“I believe in sharing the gifts God gives you – and I know how to make a living in real estate,” Linhart says. “I can’t make you not lazy, but if you have the drive – and Heidi has tons of drive – I can help you get to where you want to go. Our friendship grew from that. She’d say, ‘What do you think about this?’ and ‘What do you think about that?’”
As Rau watched Linhart expand his empire of RE/MAX outfits to more than 20, she began to envision a partnership with him that would accelerate the growth of her venture. In time, she shaped her idea into a pitch.
“Heidi said, ‘I want to grow my business, and you know how to grow a business. Let’s partner up and figure out how make this work,’” Linhart remembers. “Teaming up with Heidi was appealing to me because she wants to help people succeed and she has the enthusiasm to back that up. She’d drive hundreds of miles to help someone with the smallest detail. I love that about her.”
“Lee and I have the same growth-oriented mindset,” Rau adds. “That was one of the things that attracted me to this opportunity.”
As Rau and Linhart’s discussion transitioned from the discussion phase to the hammer-and-nails phase in December, Rau agreed that a few things had to go. One was the name of her brokerage.
When Rau was preparing to launch in Ooltewah, she chose the name “Ambassadors” because she believed it reflected her core values as a real estate professional.
“Agents who come through my door must have an ambassador mentality to work here. In turn, I promise to help them become the best version of themselves they can be,” Rau said at the time. (See “No dead space in Rau’s offices” in the Sept. 23, 2022, issue of the Hamilton County Herald.)
Rau agreed to switch to Preferred Properties to better align her brokerage with Linhart’s brand. Many of the offices he owns in the Southeast use the moniker and have coalesced into an active referral network. The notion of not only identifying her business with a growing marque but also tapping into a potentially lucrative business resource made sense, she says.
“I saw the referral network as a great opportunity for the agents we’d bring in,” Rau adds.
Rau also agreed to move her enterprise from Ooltewah to Chattanooga to better position it to serve people searching for real estate in the Scenic City area.
“When people are searching for a home in this area, they’re looking for a Chattanooga address, not an Ooltewah address,” Rau explains. “If we didn’t have a Chattanooga address, then our agents would miss the local referral opportunities that come through RE/MAX’s international referral network. We want to make sure our agents have the right tools.”
A teacher’s heart
Rau comes from a family of teachers and developed a love for instruction early in life. Her passion was so prevalent that it expressed itself through her playtime.
“I played school when I was a kid. I’d set up all my stuffed animals and teach them. I’d literally write their papers out – they all had their own little papers in different handwriting – and pretend I was their teacher.”
At the advice of her mother, who wanted her to earn a good living, Rau went in a different direction in college. While she later loosed the unfulfilled teacher in her as she trained and counseled new agents at Ambassadors, she says she still felt like she was falling short of her potential as an educator.
Preferred Properties will give Rau the opportunity make up that lost ground as she takes on agent development at not just her and Linhart’s Chattanooga office but also much of his Southeast network.
“Heidi is a trainer,” Linhart says. “She has the brain and the heart for it. I’m not as technically inclined as she is, and she’s mastered all the RE/MAX systems and tools our agents will be using, so we’re placing that in her hands.”
Rau says the ability to utilize her teaching gene has given the experience of launching Preferred Properties a touch of the poetic.
“I’ll be teaching things that will impact agents on a larger scale. That’s made this opportunity even more meaningful for me.”
While Rau will still be the guiding hand at Preferred Properties in Chattanooga, she’s turned over some of the responsibilities she juggled on her own at Ambassadors, including recruiting and managing the agents. Amy Mullins, previously of Zach Taylor Real Estate, will recruit agents for the firm, while Keller Williams veteran Lisa Wildenberg will serve as the broker in charge.
With the Preferred Properties leadership in place and the infrastructure for agent and company growth built, Linhart is expecting a banner 2025 for the office despite the current sluggish behavior of the housing market.
“Real estate has been in a recession for the last two years,” Linhart says. “Many brokerages are struggling because of interest rates and the volatility of the market. The sales are just not there. But the market is growing, albeit slowly. I expect we’ll end the year on a positive note.”
Rau says Preferred Properties is the fulfillment of a vision she’s had for her life since she was in challenging circumstances. Her dream was not about where she was but where she wanted to go, she adds, and the same holds true for her business.
“I was a single mother making $10 an hour working at a hospital. But I had the drive to do more for my kids and to serve as a good example for them. So, I’m constantly reminding myself that a business is only as good as you’re going to make it.”
If Rau ever needs the support of her business partner, Linhart will already be on his way.
“I visit every office every month,” Linhart, who now owns 27 RE/MAX outlets, says. “My car is 10 months old and has 67,000 miles on it.”
If only Linhart could travel as the crow – or the eagle – flies.
Speaking of eagles, Rau says she has fun telling others that her and Linhart spotting two of the birds on the same day while 230 miles apart was not a coincidence. Rather, it was a harbinger of good things.
“Our consensus is that it was a sign that this partnership is going to SOAR.”