When Realtor Susan Stout is offering advice to new agents, she tells them to find their niche.
Her niche, she says, is relocation.
“I’m not an open house person. I don’t like to tell sellers what to do with their home and I don’t like to follow buyers from room to room,” she admits. “But I can sell somebody on Chattanooga.”
As a lifelong resident of the Chattanooga area, Stout says she knows the city like the back of her hand. But instead of using her knowledge to impress her friends at social gatherings, she draws on it to find her relocation clients the right place to live.
“I encourage people who are moving here to become familiar with the area first because where they work and what they like to do will influence where they’ll want to live,” Stout offers. “If you like urban walkability, then you might want to rent a place downtown.”
Such was the case with a recent client of Stout’s from Pennsylvania. After the man leased a downtown condominium, he spent the next few months walking and riding his bike to restaurants and other nearby destinations.
He loved the experience, Stout says, so he decided to buy a place downtown.
As someone who handles more than 15 relocations a year, Stout has seen this scenario play out across the greater Chattanooga area.
“Signal Mountain is a great community for people who have kids, but they need to figure out if they want to drive up and down the mountain every day,” Stout explains.
“If you like to play on the water, then you might want to consider Hixson or Soddy Daisy. If you enjoy golf, then maybe you want to be at Black Creek. If you prefer to shop, then I would suggest East Brainerd or Ooltewah.
“Working with relocation clients is less about leasing or selling them a place to live and more about finding the right community for them.”
Stout connects with relocation clients through Coldwell Banker Pryor Realty, where she’s a member of the in-house relocation team.
As Stout explains, Pryor Realty has relationships with various companies that provide third-party relocation services to employers.
The relocation companies handle all the logistics of moving an employer’s new or existing employees.
This includes finding a reliable Realtor who can help employees with all their real estate needs – from selling their current house to finding a new home.
Stout says the process is more complicated than the typical residential transaction because she has to deal with a company as well as her client. Plus, the relocation company claims a hefty percentage of her fee for any transactions that take place – about 45%, Stout says.
As a result, some agents shy away from doing relocations, Stout claims. But she looks at each one as an investment rather than a single sale that yielded a cut fee.
“I look at what my relationship with my client might produce in the long run,” she explains. “One of my clients started as a relocation, and now we’re working together on his fourth investment property. Another client leased a place when he moved to Chattanooga, then bought an expensive condo, and then sold that and bought another expensive condo.
“So, a relocation might cost me initially but I’ll make it up down the road.”
Certain financial factors do mitigate some of the hit Stout takes on a relocation. For example, people who are relocating often have more money to spend because their company is backing them up, she says, so they often seek out the more expensive properties.
Also, Stout says she simply spends less on marketing herself elsewhere.
“I’m not trying to get work through Zillow.com or Realtor.com; this is where I spend my money.”
It’s also where Stout spends at least half of her time, she adds. In 2020, she did 34 transactions totaling $11 million in sales. About 50% of that was relocations.
Stout was introduced to relocation services while working for Tennessee Valley Authority. During the back end of her 34 years with the company, she managed its talent acquisition department, which included relocations.
At the time, TVA was spending about $11 million a year on moving people, Stout says, making it a cash-heavy endeavor for the company.
As part of her work, she would call the owner of Pryor Realty, Peggy Pryor, and tell her she needed an agent to give someone a tour of Chattanooga.
When Stout decided to retire from TVA, she told Pryor she was thinking about becoming a Realtor and was interested in doing relocations.
“She said, ‘You need to come here and work for me,’’’ Stout recalls with a laugh.
Stout says the skill that has been the most valuable to her relocation work is her ability to solve problems. This has been especially useful in the current building climate, in which the high costs of materials can bring plans and visions to a screeching halt.
“I had clients from Charlotte who wanted to do a custom build at Black Creek,” Stout begins, “but because of the question mark surrounding building materials, we decided this wasn’t the best time for that.”
Instead of bidding her clients farewell, Stout secured for them a six-month lease in a downtown Chattanooga condo. Since then, she’s sold a condo to the clients and is on tap for when they’re ready to build.
“You need to be a good problem solver to do well with relocations,” she adds. “It’s not about sales, sales, sales but ‘You need something and I’m going to figure out how to get it for you.’”
That said, some of Stout’s clients do end up walking away, she says. This included a family from California that had visions of buying land close to Chattanooga and then building a couple of homes on the property. Since Hamilton County is short on land for building, the family decided to look elsewhere.
“Perhaps they thought Chattanooga is rural more than it is,” Stout says. “People sometimes have a vision of what they want, but when they get here, they see it’s not going to be easy to find.”
However, when someone is open to exploring other options, Chattanooga has plenty to offer, Stout adds, and it’s her pleasure to introduce someone to what she says she believes will be their niche in the city.
“It’s helpful when you’ve lived here your whole life and can tell people about how downtown used to be, or how Ooltewah has grown, or how Chattanooga has always had a lot of private schools. I love doing that, not because I’ve lived here all my life but because I’ve loved living here all my life.”