Editorial
Front Page - Friday, September 25, 2009
Prudential Realty Center broker a true Georgia peach
David Laprad
“Are you sure you want to go into real estate?” an acquaintance asked Shel Thomas in 1995. “All it is is solving people’s problems — their housing problem, their financing problem, their dog problem. Problems, problems, problems!”
“I can do that,” Thomas said. “No problem.”
The LaFayette, Ga., native was ready for a change. Although she liked her work in statistical process control, she’d advanced to the point where she was stuck behind a desk, and it wasn’t her thing.
“I wanted a job where I could be out of the office, work my own schedule and take care of my son if he was sick, and real estate gave me all of that,” she says.
Ignoring the caveats, Thomas obtained her real estate license and went to work for Gloria Sutton. After Sutton sold her company to Better Homes and Gardens, Thomas found herself working for broker Darlene Brown at the company’s East Brainerd branch. She credits Brown with teaching her, through example, how to be an effective broker.
“She’s one of the classiest, most intelligent persons I’ve ever met,” Thomas says. “She supports her agents, and if she has a problem with you, she handles it behind a closed door, just you and her. She’s a marvelous example of what a broker should be.”
Thinking she wanted to work for company that allows its agents to keep all of their commission on a sale, Thomas made a change she now regrets, as the “100 percent” company for which she went to work “nickled and dimed” her to death. After leaving that company, she enjoyed a brief stint working in the new homes division at Realty Center GMAC, and then became a broker for Century 21 in Fort Oglethorpe.
“I wasn’t unhappy at Realty Center; I saw the position at Century 21 as a way to get into management,” says Thomas.
When Century 21 consolidated its operations in Dalton, Ga., Thomas came back to Realty Center as an agent, relishing the opportunity to simply help her clients and not worry about the ins and outs of running a real estate office. But when her broker, Jack Deaton, left the firm, she took over.
“The agents here make my job much easier than it could be,” she says. “And the owners, Ben and Karen Kelly, are great. They give me guidelines and then set me loose to make my own decisions. They have faith in their brokers.”
Today, Prudential Realty Center in Fort Oglethorpe is the number one Georgia real estate firm on the Chattanooga MLS and 10th overall in sales, with $4.6 million in August 2009.
“When the phone rings, we answer it and give our clients the best possible service,” she says. “And as broker, I make sure my agents have what they need to do their job.”
Thomas calls herself a “working broker” who’s committed to being in the office during the day. “As an agent, I leaned on my broker for guidance,” says Thomas. “So now that I’m a broker, I keep up with the rules and the forms and make sure my agents know what they need to know.”
Although real estate is a long way from statistical process control, Thomas says her time in the business has been rewarding. “I’ve made some of the best friends, and I love seeing people enjoy their home,” she says. “I especially like going by a house I sold, and over time the trees have grown and the landscape has matured.”
Thomas has also compiled a collection of amusing stories throughout her career in real estate, most centered on her now 19-year-old son, BJ, who would sometimes tag along when she showed houses.
“My son helped me with deals and he hurt a few deals,” she says, laughing. “I’d shown about 30 houses to a couple that really wanted a big master bedroom. So my son had seen plenty of houses with them, and being 9 years old, he tended to ask a lot of questions, so he put his hands on his hips and said, ‘Is this the master? Because if it is, it’s the smallest master I’ve ever seen!’”
Thomas never saw the couple again. “I told him to leave the selling to me,” she says. Her son is currently serving in the U.S. Army, though, so she doesn’t have to worry about him running off any of her clients.
Thomas has achieved a good measure of success in real estate, but it’s only a small part of the much bigger picture of her life. As a young girl, for example, she and her sister competed in rodeos; as an adult, she owns two quarter horses, including an award-winning show horse and another she calls her “therapy horse.”
“I ride my horse to get rid of stress,” she says.
Her horses have plenty of room to stretch their legs, too, as Thomas owns eight acres of rural property. They have to share their space with a chicken house Thomas converted into a barn, though, and the farmhouse in which Thomas lives.
“Some developers were going to tear down the house, but I loved it, so I had it moved, put it over a basement, had it steel-beamed, took it to the studs and rebuilt it,” she says. “It was a year-long process, but it turned out fantastic.
“I kept the old doors but put down tongue and groove pine floors in part of it to make it look like an old New England house. I tried to leave in as much of its old charm as possible while upgrading it to make it more energy efficient.”
Thomas has achieved a rare balance in life, rising among the ranks in the real estate business while passionately pursuing a number of personal interests. She works hard, but she doesn’t let her schedule control her; she enjoys her home, but like any true Georgia Peach, she also loves to experience the outdoors. There are few boundaries fencing her in and there are few challenges she won’t meet head on.
“I can do that,” she’ll say. “No problem.”
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