Welcome back to the Chagrin Falls Merchant Association Podcast where we’re talking all things Chagrin Falls and the businesses who reside here.
This week’s guest is fellow resident and trusted real estate executive, Karen Eagle of the Karen Eagle Group.
This episode was produced by Megan Moran at Mompreneur Co. Studio.
Did you know there’s a beautiful meeting space and content creation studio right here in the Falls? Take a virtual tour to see for yourself.
How Karen Eagle brought Sotheby’s to Cleveland
2024 Chagrin Falls Real Estate Update
Karen: Chagrin Falls is just such a great place to be. It's a great community and from a real estate perspective so many people want to live here because they've heard great things about it. They love the downtown area. The schools are in demand. It's a fun place to live and work.
But it's also frustrating, because we have a lot of buyers who are trying to get into homes and it’s not as easy these days.
Ever since 2020 when the real estate market exploded, not just in Chagrin Falls but this whole surrounding area, there's been such high-demand. In Bainbridge, Moreland Hills, Solon, Hunting Valley, all of these communities where people want to go but the inventory has been really tight.
Part of that is because we don't have new construction developments. It's not like you see in Florida, Atlanta or Nashville.
There are places in Cleveland where there's new construction, but there's not much of it in the Chagrin Valley. And so our inventory is exactly what it is. There might be a new house here or there, a one up or a two up, but it's finite. And there's competition for that finite inventory.
Megan: What are your thoughts on that? Because it's your livelihood, but also you live here. Are you kind of happy that there's not the new construction? Do you wish that there was more inventory? Where do you fall on that?
Karen: I think it's great for sellers and it's unfortunate for buyers because couple that with the fact that our interest rates have gone up quite a bit.
I have a real soft spot for first time homebuyers or younger homebuyers because my children are in that category right now. And of course, I would love my children to come back here and I don't want this to be an unaffordable place for them. (I say that collectively, not just my two boys, but all my friends and their kids. I would love it if all of those kids who want to come back here could.)
And that is the downside of it. It's becoming almost unaffordable for young people. And I would love to see some new construction that is affordable.
But the flip side of that is the prices have become so high, as a residual effect from the pandemic when supplies were really expensive, that you would still have a really hard time building a brand new house using a typical first time home buyer budget.
So I have mixed feelings about it and I don't know if it will stabilize anytime soon. I can't predict the future, but I do know that if interest rates come down, the demand is just going to go up.
Maybe a lot of the empty nesters will decide to move out of their homes and those would be great homes for these younger buyers to come into.
But I also know, I am considered an empty nester, so should we still be in the house that we raised our kids in? Probably not. We use a quarter of the house on a regular basis and more when they are home with all their friends and significant others. It's nice to have the space, but that's maybe a couple of times a year.
We are not alone. There are so many people who are in that same position as we are and there's nowhere for us to go. We may have a little more disposable income than a first time home buyer but we still can't find the right spot because we don't want to go too far away. We like the Chagrin Valley, but don't want a big house and a big yard. We want to live somewhere easy. And there aren't many places like that.
If I were to go to say Phoenix or Scottsdale, there are all of these really cool, over 45 active lifestyle communities. Maybe if we had something like that, we might be able to place some of those empty nesters there which would free up the larger family homes that a lot of these younger people are looking for.
So we kind of have this really tight inventory situation on both ends of the spectrum.
Defining Luxury in Cleveland
Our brokerage is Sotheby's International Realty. And so a lot of people, assume that because we're with the Sotheby's brand, that we don't service all clients. That maybe we only do luxury real estate.
This is Cleveland- so our luxury real estate looks very different from luxury real estate everywhere else.
We treat every client the same- their house is their treasure regardless of the price point. We treat every buyer the same. It doesn't matter how much you're paying for a house, you still get the same degree of service and respect from us.
Right around 2020, I became intrigued by the Sotheby's real estate brand. And so I just reached out to them and said, Would you ever have a brokerage in Cleveland?
And after a few nice conversations and a visit, the representative said, you need to prove to me why Cleveland is worthy of a Sotheby's because we're not buying what you're saying. We don't think that there is a luxury market in Cleveland.
I said, “Great. Jump in my car and let me show you our luxury market.” And so we toured around a couple of locations where there truly were some fabulous high end houses. And we met with a couple of business leaders in Cleveland to explain Cleveland on a broader perspective.
And at the end of the day, that Sotheby's rep had a completely different understanding of the Cleveland area. He realized we have a very strong manufacturing base, the hospitals are such huge employers, in all salary ranges, and that post COVID people came back because their roots were planted in Northeast Ohio- and these were people who bought some really, really nice houses.
It's not just high end. It covers the entire spectrum. And so bringing this brokerage into Cleveland, we are not selling, gazillion dollar houses like you see on all these reality TV shows. That just does not exist in Cleveland. The highest end of our market might be the lowest end of the luxury market in a major city, but it's our luxury market and we're very happy with it.
Megan: Did he seem like, Holy smokes, this is a hidden gem here. I didn't know?
Karen: He really did and it was fun to feel pride in our city.
You just don't think about these things until you have to. And once you start digging, it's pretty cool to learn about our history and how much we have to offer here.
How Karen built her business in the Chagrin Valley
Karen: I started in real estate in 2011. I was looking for something to do when I “grew up.” When my children became high school aged and my time was more free.
I was always interested in real estate from an investment perspective. So I got my real estate license to help me better understand how to do fix and flips and become a landlord. But I started working with clients right away with buying and selling.
(The irony is: it took me 10 years before I was ever able to buy my first rental property because that was the first time I really had a chance to buckle down and focus on it.)
I credit a lot of my success to my volunteering days. I love doing all sorts of volunteer work and had some credentials after that because I was successful with getting done what I said I was going to do.
People knew me from those types of situations. They knew I would do what I said I would do and that I have integrity. I'm too serious sometimes, but I think it helps. I had such a great network of people who then turned into some of my early clients.
And after so many years and transactions, you just build up a base. Most of our business is referral or repeat business now. Sometimes we get phone calls out of the blue because somebody has seen our signs or they they've seen our ads and I have a team and we all work really hard. We're a very professional group and I think people appreciate that about us- that we're not dabbling in it and we're not just doing it to keep ourselves busy. It's a full time career for all of us.
Megan: It's so beautiful to hear. “You get done what you say you were going to.” That’s such an important point and makes sense why you got clients right away.
You had a network that trusted you, they knew that you were going to do the things you said you were going to do.
Of course you would do well from the beginning. I think sometimes, let me know if you feel this way as well, people think there's a lot of overnight successes, right? But there is a lot of stuff going on before that. That was a quick trajectory, but there were also years ahead of that where you were building trust, getting your name out there and doing things that built your network.
And so it makes sense that your business is mostly referral and repeat. But you did say it took you some time to build up that base.
For people who are just starting their businesses here in the falls, it can feel daunting to hear it takes time. They might be thinking “but how long are you talking?”
Do you want to share a little bit about that buildup and how you were able to build a client base that is referral and repeat- not always externally having to put yourself out there?
Building a Referral and Repeat Business
Karen: For me, I've always been a people pleaser.
I don't want anybody to be disappointed because of me, or something I did or did not do. And I probably work a little bit too much because I want to make sure that again, I deliver what I said I'm going to deliver. I want people to be happy at the end and there's a lot of work that goes into retail that people do not see.
They only see the end product and you have to get that, backend right to make the front end look good. And so I think it's important to let people know what some of that is. They don't want to support something that's just a flash in the pan type of situation.
I feel like locally in the Chagrin Valley, people are generally very supportive of their, their community. They want people to succeed. So you have to just fulfill that obligation of doing what you say you're going to do and make it a great experience for them.
It's a community wide sense of pride. We want these retailers here. We want them to succeed. We want to support them.
Megan: Such a great point of:
You got to get the back end right to let the front end look good.
That's a beautiful statement. There's something special about the falls. We want to support local and then we want to share about it.
It's a unique benefit of working here and in Cleveland as a whole. We have a lot of small, local based businesses and from my conversations with a lot of Cleveland mompreneurs, we have a truly unique ecosystem here.
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