When the builders of the new Prairie Pass development in Apison, Tenn., met with Gina Sakich, co-owner and co-broker of Real Estate Partners, they had one request: Sell 300 homes.
“Great!” Sakich replied. “What’s your vision?”
“For you to sell 300 homes,” they said.
Real Estate Partners is now the exclusive sales and marketing team for the development. To date, builders have completed 11 houses and put the roof on the clubhouse.
Word must have gotten around about Sakich’s uncanny ability to sell ambitious projects.
She proved this 10 years ago when Darlene Brown, then the owner of Realty Center, sent her and Belinda Winslett downtown to sell Loveman’s on Market, which was in the process of being converted into condominiums. At the time, living downtown was virtually unheard of, but that didn’t stop them.
“The builders were starting to put in the condos, and everyone told me I was crazy because no one would live downtown, especially at $175 per square foot. But I knew it would sell. We have the river and the mountains and the festivities, and you can walk to everything. To me, living downtown made sense,” Sakich says.
She and Winslett sold out Loveman’s.
“We threw a party. We had ballroom dancers and trees on the roof, and we brought in people to show them the view of the city at night and explain how nice it would be for them to have their own elevator. We even got the news involved,” she says.
Sakich says many of the people who purchased condos at Loveman’s had nostalgic ties to the building, which had once been a high-end department store. Mothers had taken their daughters there to buy their prom dresses, men had met their future wives there and potential buyers could remember purchasing a fur where they were standing in a condo.
Sakich’s belief in the vision of the builders was a part of the success of the project as well. She knew people would buy then, and they continue to buy today – at $450 per square foot. “That was the tip of the iceberg. I had a gut feeling that overrode all of the cynicism,” she says.
Only a handful of people know what Sakich put at risk to see the Loveman’s project succeed. She’d been working for Brown for ten years, had been at least a million dollar producer since year one, and was annually taking home six figures selling single family homes in Chattanooga and North Georgia. When she switched to selling Loveman’s, her take home pay dropped to $12,000 the first year.
It rebounded the following year, and once Loveman’s was sold, she, Winslett and Brown took on Museum Bluffs Parkview. When they were done selling that development, they decided to go out on their own, and Real Estate Partners was born. “We wanted it to be just us. We thought that would be more manageable,” Sakich says.
Today, the small three-person boutique has grown to include 36 agents, all of which are housed in a large sprawling space on the ground story of Loveman’s. This has increased the time Sakich spends in the office.
“When I started in real estate, I never went to meetings. I’d work from home or be out in the field. Now that this is partly my business, I go to the meetings,” she says, laughing.
Sakich credits her husband, David, with giving her a critical nudge into real estate. A long-time employee of Federal Express, she and David would spend their weekends looking at houses because she “liked knowing what was out there.” She saw enough homes to be able to recommend listings to her friends and family members when they’d begin the process of looking for a house to buy.
Eventually, David asked Sakich if she’d ever thought about selling real estate. She told him being a Realtor had never crossed her mind. “I had a great job at Federal Express, and I couldn’t see going from that to straight commission,” she says.
When Sakich made the leap of faith, it made a big difference in her life.
“I liked the people at Federal Express and I was grateful to have the job, but I didn’t love it. Now I’m paid to do something I used to spend my weekends doing for fun,” she says.
Sakich has more than ambition and vision; she’s also mastered the nuts and bolts of real estate, especially customer service. “I tell my agents to answer their phones, and then I call them to make sure they do,” she says, smiling slyly.
Although Sakich fits the mold of the modern Realtor – energetic, positive, knowledgeable, resourceful and tech savvy – she also packs a few surprises. One such detail is related to her daughter.
“I was unable to have kids, so when I was 30, I adopted a little girl. Her name is Chloe. She just turned 20. There’s nothing not special about her,” Sakich says.
Sakich enjoys telling stories about her daughter. When Chloe was 4, and saw the drapes in a house to which her mother had taken her, she exclaimed, “Mom, those curtains look fabulous!” She’d clearly been listening to her mother, who was unaware she was picking up on the details of being a Realtor.
A few years later, when a client was a no-show for the third time, Chloe said, “When I’m a Realtor, I’m not going to do this!”
Sakich laughs at the memory. However, instead of becoming a Realtor, Chloe, now 20, works as a medical assistant at Memorial Hospital. Sakich could not be prouder. “I doubt it would be possible to be closer to a biological child,” she says, her eyes tearing slightly.
Although Sakich is no longer rearing her daughter, she still occasionally steals time from real estate to have a personal life. She and her husband, a pilot for Delta, live on an idyllic ten-acre mini-farm, complete with a 140-year-old restored farmhouse, which takes work. Her hobbies include relaxing by the pool, riding horses and traveling. This year alone, she’s vacationed in Africa and Budapest, Hungary.
Work is always nipping at her heels, though. Sakich lists and sells residential properties, leases commercial spaces and tends to the business, which she and Brown now share with a new partner. She can’t imagine doing anything else.
“Making people happy makes me happy. And I still love looking at homes. Usually, the agent is the one who gets tired of showing homes to a client, but with me, it’s the other way around. My clients will be ready to stop, and I’ll have one more to show them,” she says, laughing again.
Her clients only have to trust her vision and ambition, and they’ll be glad they went along for the ride.