My Twenty-Year Journey in San Carlos Real Estate

In March of 2005, I had a very difficult conversation with myself. I was five years into my career as an attorney. Out of law school, I was fortunate enough to be hired by one of the world’s most prestigious law firms, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, in Palo Alto. A few years later, with a few other associates from that firm, we broke off and formed our own firm which was instantly successful. I had taken a shortcut to the path to partnership. Business was booming and from the outside looking in, it would be tough to imagine a career path going any better. The only problem: I was absolutely miserable practicing law.

For anyone who has experienced the rigors of law school, the terror and angst of sitting through one of the toughest bar exams in the country and the exhaustion of high stakes law firm interviews, they will tell you it is a unique experience that is only truly appreciated by those that went through it themselves. I was one of the lucky few to make it to the other side, yet in April of 2005, I walked away from all of it and into San Carlos real estate sales.

Complicating matters at the time was that my wife had greatly reduced her work hours, we had a three-year old daughter at home and our second daughter was due in October of that same year. San Carlos real estate offered no clear path forward, no benefits and no sign of a first paycheck. It was the ultimate gamble.

On my first day in San Carlos real estate, I sat in the lobby of the old ReMax office on the corner of San Carlos Avenue and Walnut Street. As I was sitting in the lobby, awaiting to meet with the manager, I watched an agent walk across the lobby dressed in a cheap suit, sneakers and screaming obnoxiously into his new flip phone. It was every typical stereotype of a realtor wrapped into one. In a moment of panic, I thought about running for the exit and back to my law firm and pretending that this decision never took place. However, before I had time to make a run for it, the manager greeted me and showed me to my office. The journey had begun.  

Back in 2005, San Carlos real estate was dominated by three very seasoned agents who controlled the majority of the market. The thought of trying to break into that group was the furthest thing from my mind. At the time, I was simply trying to sell one San Carlos home to gain some experience and make sure my family had food on the table. While I did survive my first day in the office, I distinctly remember leaving that evening feeling as though I had still made a terrible mistake. Had I been told that exactly twenty years later I would be the #1 Agent for San Carlos for the time period of 2006-2025, in every meaningful category, including: Total Sales Volume, Most Listings Sold and Most Buyer transactions, I would have told the messenger to double check their notes and to please refrain from ingesting whatever substance they may be on. It would have been an inconceivable notion for me at the time. After selling 455 homes since that day in San Carlos, I can say that gamble was one of the best decisions I ever made. Here is how I made it work:

I started with the belief that the real estate sales industry in San Carlos was both traditional and archaic in so many regards. The top tier of agents were doing nothing that was revolutionary.

Real estate sales is a bit of a unicorn in that the evolution of the internet and modern technology has had very little effect on the nuts and bolts of the real estate sales process with traditional brokerages. In other words, your prospective sale in San Carlos today, would look strikingly similar to a home sale in 1998.  

To me, that was an opportunity. Top agents would send out mailers, buy space in local papers and hand out marketing materials at open houses. I went a different route. I knew right away that I needed to think unconventionally and take calculated risks. I tapped four unlikely and key sources that I believe paved the way for my current standing in San Carlos:

 

Growing up in San Carlos and moving back with my family in 2002, I knew San Carlos really well. As you may have noticed, San Carlos loves to talk. A lot. There really was no outlet for that in the community. Social media did not yet exist. In 2007, I developed and launched the San Carlos Blog site. The first of its kind for San Carlos, it was an immediate hit. I would post twice a week with one community article and one San Carlos real estate article. The site gained instant traction and became the go-to site for San Carlos real estate and community issues, and remains so today, 18 years later.

 

I understood very quickly the connection between the strength and importance of San Carlos schools and the value potential San Carlos buyers placed on those schools. Buying an ad in the school distributions was not enough. I thought outside the box and approached the San Carlos Education Foundation with a proposal: in exchange for being their sole real estate sponsor, I would donate the sale of one home per year for free to the highest bidder at the SCEF auction. This proposal turned out to be a huge success and it would be continued for the next 10 years.

 

In 2006, I founded and solely funded San Carlos Treasure Hunters. I wanted an event that I could take ownership of and direct myself within San Carlos. SCTH was a yearly event where San Carlos youth, ages 10-14 would compete in teams of 3 to find a hidden treasure in San Carlos through a hunt based on San Carlos history markers and a fictional story that each year covered a different period of San Carlos history. Teams learned San Carlos history, how to work under pressure and true teamwork. Since 2006, SCTH has served over 2000 San Carlos youth and 1500 San Carlos families. It is by far, what I am most proud of during my 20-year San Carlos career. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my long-time partner in this endeavor, Dr. Gary Lau of San Carlos Orthodontics.

 

I rolled the dice one more time in late 2014, when myself and my co-founders decided to leave our current brokerages and start a brokerage from scratch on January 1, 2015. The belief was simple: get the best, high-performing agents who were also wonderful people and put them under a single umbrella. We believed the synergy and excitement of that combination would be enough to catapult us past the well-established brokerages in town. In our first full year, we became the #1 brokerage for San Carlos properties. A title we never gave up. By 2018, we became the #1 brokerage for San Carlos and Redwood City sales. Finally, in 2021, we lived out our own Silicon Valley start-up story when we accepted an offer to be purchased by Sereno, which later became Christie’s International Real Estate Sereno, which is the office you recognize today in downtown San Carlos.

 

The journey in San Carlos real estate has been one that I would not trade for anything. I have had the good fortune to meet so many wonderful families in town and so many of those transactions turned into meaningful friendships.

 

The journey has also taught me two primary lessons that I have now passed on to my daughters: 1. Never be afraid to switch things up and do what you love; and 2. Remember that your best bet is always on yourself.