The Crossland Team is Back at Keller Williams Realty Austin SW Market Center

And the real estate journey continues …

Sylvia and I started Crossland Real Estate in Jan 1993, and remained independent until we sold our property management portfolio in 2004 and “retired” for a year. We didn’t actually formally retire … more of a sabbatical … as we were still in our 40s with kids 9 and 12. But we did take a year off from active real estate “production”.

We weren’t sure whether we wanted to remain in real estate forever or not. I started a telecom services company and dabbled in Business Brokerage, both of which were interesting pursuits worthy of a full effort, and which I could have succeeded at doing, but after some time off from the daily real estate routine, something happened… The phone rang. It was Real Estate. It wanted us back.

Sometimes distance from something brings perspective and a renewed appreciation of it.

So, in 2005, we decided to return to real estate full time, but also to operate under the Keller Williams Realty brand. We’d operated as a “mom and pop” independent real estate Brokerage for over a decade, and wanted to see what it was like to be part a big office Brokerage.

Not just big, but the biggest single location real estate office in the world (currently 800+ agents operate out of our SW Austin location). The “KW Mother Ship”. Talk about going from one extreme to the other!

It went well. We consistently ranked in the “Top 5” Teams. We joined the leadership team, felt a “part of”, and our business thrived. We grew as professionals. We drank the “KW Kool-Aid” as some would say. And it tasted good.

But after 4 years, we left, to become independent again. Ostensibly, to slow down and work less, to focus more on Listings and to grow the Property Management side of the business, both of which we accomplished. But something was still missing.

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