Realtors want to look their best when meeting with a client, so they generally wear something formal that says, “I’m a business professional, and you can trust me with the biggest purchase, or sale, of your life.” Realtor Amy Shulman, however, could probably get away with wearing a t-shirt that says, “Been there, done that.”
Shulman has, after all, scaled nearly every mountain and navigated most of the valleys a buyer or a seller could experience during her family’s many, many moves.
In the beginning, the moves came as her husband, John Shulman, head basketball coach at The McCallie School, accepted new jobs in different cities. As they migrated from town to town, Amy learned the ins and outs of finding and buying a home. During this time, Team Shulman grew from two to five as they added three boys to their roster. When the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga hired John to be its assistant men’s basketball coach, the Shulmans moved to the Scenic City, but they weren’t done house-hopping. Instead, they moved six times, going from Black Creek, to three different houses on Lookout Mountain, to Missionary Ridge before finally settling on the McCallie campus a year ago.
“We’d move into a house, fix it up, and I’d say I never wanted to move again,” Amy says. “Two or three years later, we’d be gone. It was always just a matter of time.” She laughs, filling the front conference room at Real Estate Partners, the brokerage with which she’s currently working, with a pleasant sound.
The Shulmans aren’t nomadic, nor do they get the seven-year house itch early; rather, their moves have been precipitated by their changing needs as a family.
“We loved living on Lookout Mountain – until our boys started going to school off the mountain,” Amy says. “We were going up and down the mountain a dozen times a day, so we moved to Missionary Ridge, which was closer to McCallie, and made things easier.”
Amy’s experiences have given her a degree of empathy that’s rare in any profession, especially with regard to the pressures that come with moving. But she does more than offer an understanding shoulder on which to cry; she uses the lessons she’s learned to help others through the same kinds of challenges. “We’ve had stressful moments when moving, so I try to make the process as unstressful as possible for my clients,” she says. “Once you’re under contract, and you have to do the inspection and the appraisal and the financing, things can get hairy, so I go to them with options for who to hire for this or that, and I try to always be accessible. My goal is to make buying a home as easy as possible.”
Buying a home isn’t all drudgery, though, so Amy also tries to help her clients feel the excitement of looking for a new place to live. Her many experiences as a buyer come in handy here, too. “My favorite thing about looking for a home is trying to figure out what would work best for our family,” she says. “I love changing things about a house, whether it’s taking down walls, adding a front porch, or altering its look.”
Having learned to re-visualize a space allows Amy to help clients see the potential in a home. Recently, a client balked at the amount of empty space in a vacant Red Bank home. Amy put him at ease by helping him to mentally furnish the room. “I said, ‘Imagine your eating table on this side of the room and your couch and your TV over here,’” she says. “He liked the idea.”
Another buyer needs a home office, but a house Amy showed the client didn’t have a formal work space, so she put her problem-solving skills to work by trying to figure out how to turn a spare bedroom or a dining room into what the people need. “That’s a passion of mine,” she says. “I love going into a house and saying, ‘This isn’t a great house, but how can I make it one?’”
John was not surprised when Amy slipped easily into the role of Realtor three years ago. Not only had the family moved umpteen times, John and Amy had also bought, fixed up, and sold a number of investment homes, making real estate something of a second nature for the stay-at-home mom. More than that, Amy’s husband saw how she loved searching for the right home at the best price, and for several years, he encouraged her to get her license. Once their boys had reached a certain age, she felt the time had come.
Amy began her real estate career at Fletcher Bright, where she worked for Realtor John Martin. She later transitioned to Keller Williams Greater Downtown Realty, where she served as a buyer’s agent for Chattanooga Property Shop, a full-service real estate team formed by Diane Patty and Lisa Brown. Amy speaks highly of both partnerships and of the people with whom she worked, but says she was drawn to Real Estate Partners when owner and broker Darlene Brown spoke to her about developing her as an individual agent. The wings folded behind Amy’s back fluttered when she heard this, and she knew it was time to try to fly on her own.
“I liked being part of a team, especially with Diane and Lisa, but I also like working for myself,” Amy says. “At Real Estate Partners, I have the opportunity to be successful on my own terms.”
Amy doesn’t define success as merely selling a lot of homes or making good money. For her, the satisfaction of her clients is as important as the financial benefits she reaps from her work. “I want the clients to be pleased with where they ended up and how they got there,” she says. “I want to know they bought the house they wanted at the price they hoped to pay.”
Amy grew up in Erwin, Tenn., a small town nestled in the mountains of the northeast region of the state. She had an older brother, a younger sister, and parents who were the salt of the Earth (the father was a factory worker and the mother a homemaker). Amy grew up in a neighborhood full of boys, but instead of staying home, she played along, and as she grew up, a love of sports took hold inside her.
Amy had the athleticism to go along with her youthful enthusiasm, and spent most of her formative years on either a basketball court or a softball field. She continued to pursue her passion for basketball in college, spending her first two years playing for Tennessee Tech and her last two representing East Tennessee State University. Amy not only helped those teams to win games, she was good enough to be named Freshman of the Year in the Ohio Valley Conference and Player of the Year as a senior.
Amy married John right out of college and then settled into her role as wife and mother. The years saw Max, now 17, come first, then Tanner, now 15, and finally J.C., now 10. As they grew up and became involved in sports, their events were Amy’s events. The boys are still a priority for Amy, but now that she’s working, they have to fend for themselves a little more. “Me becoming a Realtor has been good for them,” she says. “Before, I was there any time they needed me. Now they have to be a little more responsible for themselves because mom isn’t always around.”
Amy does carve some time out of her schedule for herself. She spends these tiny chunks of time at the gym or watching her boys play basketball or baseball. Even during these moments, when she’s not wearing her Realtor hat, her mind is churning away on real estate. “Games are a great place to do marketing,” she says. “I’ve had three sales through my kids’ ball teams.”
Amy isn’t an aggressive salesperson, though; her approach is more heart than brawn. Through personal experience, she has come to understand that clients will know when a house is right for them. “The worst thing is to have a pushy Realtor who tries to shoehorn you into something that’s not a good fit,” she says. “Clients want to be understood, so I listen to them, find out what they like or don’t like about a house, and then try to find something that matches as many of their preferences as I can.”
Even with all of her experience as both a client and a Realtor, Amy has also learned that she still has a lot to learn. “Every buyer, every home, and every transaction is different,” she says. “It’s like hitting a moving target. You have to adapt.”
This unpredictability doesn’t throw Amy off her game. Rather, it’s precisely what keeps real estate exciting and fresh for her. Amy might have “been there and done that,” but she knows years of new mountains to climb and valleys to navigate lie ahead.