Wayne Roach has done something a lot of men aspire to do, but few accomplish: he carved out a small corner of the world, claimed it as his own, and held on to it for nearly four decades.
The time is coming, though, when he’s going to let go.
In the front yard of a ranch style house located at the corner of East Brainerd Road and Central, two signs declare, “Wayne Roach & Associates.” Inside, Roach has been serving the real estate needs of clients in Tennessee and Georgia since 1978.
The office is silent, and the cubicles and other work areas are empty except for a lady at the reception desk quietly tapping a keyboard. The lights are out, too, barring those in Roach’s office in the back of the house. At one point, 16 agents worked for Roach; today, about a half dozen agents are under his brokerage.
“I’m not doing much business right now,” Roach, 76, says from behind his desk. “I’m slowing down. Maybe that’s my age. But this is an enjoyable business. If I had to find another job, I’d have a hard time finding anything I’d like to do as much as list or sell a house.”
At first glance, Roach’s office is a trip back in time. His desk is laden with files, loose papers and knick knacks; his faux wood paneled walls are covered with loosely hung plaques and certificates; and an old Paymaster check printer he occasionally still uses is taking up space on a second desk behind him. His computer is hard to find, but it’s there in the clutter, the monitor sitting on top of a cassette tape deck that’s hooked up to a large speaker.
This is the domain of a man who has worked hard for many years in a single space.
“When I bought this place, I didn’t know if it was going to be any good, but it has been. We get good traffic outside. In fact, I think we get too much traffic now,” he says, laughing.
Throughout the decades, Roach has enjoyed times of plenty, weathered many storms, and seen big changes swoop in like birds of prey to peck away at the established ways of doing things. He’s also done business his way.
His customers, for example, are not clients, they’re potential friends.
“That’s the pleasure of this business, really,” he says, leaning forward in his chair, a hand on his right knee, and an elbow on his desk. “You make friends out of prospects. That’s been the lifeblood of my business.”
The repeat business that comes from developing relationships with his customers has helped Roach survive the downturns – including the most recent one. “It’s gotten pretty slow a time or two, but not as slow as it’s been the last couple of years. But I survived. I controlled my overhead, and I didn’t go off the deep end.”
Roach’s conservative approach has kept his business from growing as much as it might have had he operated more aggressively, but that’s fine with him, as he never sought to become a household name.
“I never tried to pattern myself off of the big companies. And it’s worked out all right. I’ve made a lot of friends. What more could I want?” he says.
Maybe less change. Roach seems nostalgic about the old fashioned ways of doing things. He picks up a well-worn calculator.
“It’s been hard for me to keep up with the changes. When I first got into the business, if you had a calculator like this, then you were ready to go. You could solve a lot of problems with it. This one has been sitting on my desk for 25 years, and it still works,” he says.
Roach also likes to reminisce about how he got into the business.
Born and raised on a farm in East Tennessee, Roach moved to Chattanooga in 1962 to be the parts manager at Cummins Diesel. When the company transferred its Scenic City manager to Knoxville, Roach took over. He liked the work. “I was happy to be there,” he says.
Then Cummins decided to move Roach to Bristol, Tenn. He was less than enthusiastic. “I’d learned to like it here. But they thought I ought to be up there,” he says.
Roach spent a day in Bristol with a real estate agent looking at houses, but was displeased when he discovered the money he’d recently spent buying a house in Chattanooga would buy less house in Bristol. He returned home and quit his job. “I was going to stay here one way or another,” he says.
Roach asked three people what he should do – and he got three different answers: trucking, real estate, and car sales. Having worked at Cummins, he was familiar with the trucking industry, but he chose real estate. “The guy who offered me a job, Rich Baughn, was a member of my Masonic lodge. I figured he could teach me what I needed to know,” Roach says.
Roach was a quick student, and four years later, opened his own business selling homes, commercial property, and “farm land, whenever [he] … could find some to list.”
He’s never regretted his choice. “I’ve enjoyed it. I don’t have any desire to quit, but some health problems in recent years have slowed me down. They haven’t stopped me, though,” he says.
Roach has no definite plans to retire, but the end of his career is within sight. He misses his wife of 48 years, Bennie, who passed away in December, and he’d like to see more of their son and daughter, who are living and working in Nashville, Tenn. He says he could also use the rest; he’s just not sure what he’d do.
“I’d have to find something to occupy my time. That’s more important now than it was before my wife passed away,” he says.
For now, however, the phones at Wayne Roach & Associates are still open, and the light is still on in Roach’s office. When his phone rings, he picks it up and says, “Wayne Roach & Associates. How can I help you?”
“Those are the kinds of calls I appreciate,” he says.