Last month, Amy Farris decided it was time to shake things up.
After three years with Compass, Farris made a calculated move to the Ebby Halliday Realtors’ Preston Center Office. It’s a move she believes is best for her business, which includes a large presence in areas south of Dallas-Fort Worth such as Cedar Creek Lake and Richland Chambers Reservoir.
“Ebby just has a huge presence down here,” Farris says. “I was really impressed with their support team and what they offered to their agents as far as marketing and things like that.”
From Teaching to Transactions
Before pursuing a career in real estate, Farris was actually a seventh-grade teacher in Mabank. As many teachers do, she often looked for ways to supplement her income in the summer.
In the summer of 2015, a friend told her about a sales associate opening at the Long Cove development on Cedar Creek Lake. While working there as an assistant to the sales manager, she got to know Don McNamara, the investor and developer behind Long Cove as well as Dallas’ Cityplace and West Village. When the sales manager left, he told her to go sell. The rest is history.
“It was a great place to start,” she says. “Most people don’t get a start like I had, so I feel very lucky.”
Farris says she doesn’t really consider herself a salesperson. She just loves to meet people, find out what they need and help them get there. It’s the same approach she used with her students.
Another trait she’s carried over from her teaching days is striving to learn answers to questions before they are asked. While working with developers, she’s followed architects and electricians to see exactly what they have to do. By becoming, in her words, “a sponge” around key players, she’s grown knowledgeable about nearly every aspect of the building process.
To DFW And Beyond
By 2018, clients were asking her to help sell their homes in Dallas. While she absolutely loved working at Long Cove, she knew it was time to move on and expand her business. However, she still works with many colleagues in the area and still lives near the lake.
Lately, Farris seems to be getting more neighbors. When the pandemic hit last year, she says there was a rush of clients looking to get away from the city and socially distance on the lakeshore. What they discovered was that they could do their job remotely while still getting to spend time on the lake each day.
On days when they had to go into the office, they realized that during rush hour, their commutes into Dallas weren’t much longer than a normal commute from a place like McKinney. Now some people are making their Dallas property their “second” home. Others sense the investment opportunities and are looking to buy up more lakefront property.
A Family Affair
With so much additional interest coming to the area, Farris is lucky to have some help on the way. Her daughter got her real estate license when she turned 21 and is now working as her assistant. She will soon relocate to Dallas and work at the Preston Center office. Farris’s son is also getting licensed and will initially help with paperwork, website and graphic design.
No word yet on If her youngest daughter will join. She just turned 14 and will be starting high school this year.
Looking ahead, Farris says she hopes to continue building her lakeside business while also expanding her presence in Dallas. She believes that she is now in the best place to make that happen.
“The people at Ebby have just been phenomenal in taking my listings, projecting them, putting me in touch with more people and getting me situated where I will have more business in the Dallas area,” she said. “They have been so welcoming.”
