Fidel Fonseca is sitting at a picnic table at the Chattanooga Rescue Mission, listening to his fiancé, Kim White, explain how a man who’s a full time Realtor, a real estate investor, a director of the Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors, a volunteer at La Paz, the chairman of the cultural diversity committee at Keller Williams Downtown and a member of the agent leadership council at his office has the time to help at the Mission during Red Day.
She sums up her missive with a simple truth: “He doesn’t know how to say ‘no.’” To be precise, Fonseca speaks English and Spanish, which means he doesn’t know how to say “no” in two languages. “He likes to help people whenever he can. I’m trying to teach him how to say “no,” but I don’t think it’s working,” White says.
If White was campaigning for an apology, she fell short. Instead, Fonseca gives her a toothy, white grin, and a shrug of his shoulders. “When you give back to your community, it puts you in the mindset of, ‘Wow, I made a difference today,’” Fonseca says.
Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Fonseca believes making a difference is a big part of being a Realtor. The moment he has his license in hand in 2001, he went straight to a Hispanic-owned store on the corner of Main and Broad Streets in downtown Chattanooga, introduced himself to the owner, and said “I’m a real estate agent, and I’m here to help you buy a house.”
The man said he was thrilled, Fonseca says, as he’d tried to buy a house a year earlier, but the language barrier between him and his Realtor had been too great for them to work together. Fonseca ended up selling one house apiece to the manager, his three daughters and his son. “I was like, ‘Holy cow! I got five deals out of one place!’”
There was a need for a bilingual real estate agent then, Fonseca says, and there continues to be one now, even though more and more Realtors are becoming capable of serving Hispanic clients. So, he and White list houses for clients and show properties to buyers, many of whom speak only Spanish.
“It’s a great feeling when I can help Hispanic homebuyers achieve their American dream,” he says.
Fonseca is also making a name for himself with real estate investors who are looking to do well in the Scenic City.
“Chattanooga offers a great opportunity to have your money work for you. You can buy a house, renovate it, and then rent it, and get a good return on your money,” he says.
Fonseca says he likes working with investors because they are “the gift that keeps on giving.”
“They come back to you when they want to buy another house, and they list with you when their property goes back on the market,” he says.
Fonseca and White did so well working with investors, they were able to begin investing in real estate themselves, and now own a number of rentals.
Judging from his success, Fonseca has a sixth sense for identifying opportunities. He also has the wherewithal to seize them. His first experience striking out on his own came while he was employed by his father’s transportation business in Chicago.
As one of nine family members working at the company, he found it hard to separate family from business, so he stepped down and launched his own transportation concern.
Fonseca met White, a Chattanooga native, in 2000, and she moved to Chicago to be with him. While she took to Fonseca, she didn’t like the weather.
“She was like, ‘Man, this is brutal! It’s May, and it’s still freezing!’ So, we would visit her family in Chattanooga, and her dad would tell me, ‘It’s easy living down here.’ And I would love it here, and I wouldn’t want to go back to Chicago,” Fonseca says.
In 2001, a friend of White’s suggested the couple move to Chattanooga and become real estate agents, as the Hispanic population in the city was growing, but there were next to no bilingual agents. Fonseca and White agreed, and made the move.
White returned home, but Fonseca went from the breakneck pace of Chicago to the more leisurely Southern lifestyle, and the change shocked him.
“Chicago is fast-paced. You’re ready to go at five in the morning, and you spend all day, every day trying to get ahead, as fast as you can, no holds barred. So when I came here, I thought, ‘Gosh, I’m going to have to take it down a couple of notches, because people in Chattanooga are not that way,’” he says.
“My quality of life immediately changed for the better. I’ve been through a complete transformation.”
Fonseca’s Chattanooga routine includes relaxing evenings and weekends with White and their two standard poodles and time spent refurbishing his cars, including two Carmengias. While he values his down time, he still takes every opportunity to give back to the community in which he lives.
“A lot of folks take what they have for granted because they don’t know what’s out there. And, quite frankly, you can’t know what’s out there unless you’ve been there.
“The little town in which my dad grew up had no running water. So, I’m grateful to be in this country and to be able to take advantage of what it has to offer. This is a land of opportunity; you can take as much as you want. Having the chance to be here and experience that is humbling to me, so I feel obligated to give back.”
Although White cracks jokes about teaching Fonseca how to say “no,” she’s proud of her fiancé and is pleased with what he’s accomplished. So is Keller Williams, as earlier this year, the company named him its cultural ambassador for the Southeast region. In this capacity, it will be Fonseca’s job to spread the word about the Keller Williams culture and, in his words, “create an atmosphere no one wants to leave.”
Without a doubt, Keller Williams picked the right person for the job.