Picture this: Leesburg, 1990, a family plants a seed in the fertile ground of real estate, and from it grows Brown Carrera Realty, a beacon in the Loudoun County property landscape. Our guest, Robin Frank, owner and driving force behind this legacy, unfolds her tale with the kind of charm that only comes from someone who has navigated the industry's waves from agent to broker, from dial-up internet to digital marketing mastery. She's not just running a business; she's living a legend, and her anecdotes are a treasure trove of wisdom and wit.
Join us for a journey through the evolving realms of property management and real estate, where Robin, with humor and heart, shares how a scuffle with Porsche became an unexpected marketing lesson, and why education in this field is more than just a requirement—it's an award-winning passion. Embrace the grit and grace of managing properties and the art of fostering relationships built on mutual respect. This is an episode that transforms the way we think about our homes and investments, with insights that resonate well beyond the closing of a sale.
Picture this: Leesburg, 1990, a family plants a seed in the fertile ground of real estate, and from it grows Brown Carrera Realty, a beacon in the Loudoun County property landscape. Our guest, Robin Frank, owner and driving force behind this legacy, unfolds her tale with the kind of charm that only comes from someone who has navigated the industry's waves from agent to broker, from dial-up internet to digital marketing mastery. She's not just running a business; she's living a legend, and her anecdotes are a treasure trove of wisdom and wit.
Join us for a journey through the evolving realms of property management and real estate, where Robin, with humor and heart, shares how a scuffle with Porsche became an unexpected marketing lesson, and why education in this field is more than just a requirement—it's an award-winning passion. Embrace the grit and grace of managing properties and the art of fostering relationships built on mutual respect. This is an episode that transforms the way we think about our homes and investments, with insights that resonate well beyond the closing of a sale.
My name is Robin Frank and I'm an owner of a real estate company here in Leesburg. It's Brown Carrera Realty. We are family owned and operated, have been since 1990.
Speaker 1:My father started in this area by being an investor. He started investing in real estate and he was running out properties and a lot of people told him at that time what are you doing? You know, nobody is interested in these properties. And he's like, yeah. So he took an early retirement from the postal service and ended up purchasing rental properties that he converted into adorable downtown Leesburg apartments which we all know are in high demand and have been for many, many years. So as time went on, people were coming to my father asking if he could manage their properties. He was not a broker, so I was a real estate agent at the time and he asked me to come on board and work with him, which I was very hesitant to do because I was managing fine on my own. But I listened to his advice and got my broker's license and in 2001, I became the broker and we started the spinoff of Brown Quarer Properties, which is Brown Quarer Realty, which we're still here today going strong. And so that's me.
Speaker 2:So you guys are Loudoun County like originals.
Speaker 1:We are Loudoun County originals as far as yeah, I'm going to be 61 coming up soon and I can tell you that I've been in real estate for 30 years, so half my life.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's crazy. How did your dad get into this?
Speaker 1:You know he was an executive with the postal service. He was running the philatelic sales division for in two states and he used to work on doing the demographics and psychographics for different areas where they should put postal services and where they're going to sell the most stamps. You know philatelic sales. So when he took an early retirement he decided that he wanted to get into real estate and wanted to invest in real estate. So he did the same thing that he was doing for the US Postal Service, which was to figure out, based on demographics and psychographics and Lord knows what else, where things were going to start moving I guess is the best way to put it. And he identified Loudoun County, and Leesburg in particular, as being one of those areas that was going to be like Old Town Alexandria.
Speaker 2:And where was he at the time?
Speaker 1:He was in Old Town, Alexandria down in that area.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was down in northern Virginia, down that way but and he lived there his whole life. He was raised in Old Town, alexandria, as a kid and you know half those houses that he lived in they could have probably bought for $30,000. Now they're $3 million properties and same property footprint just renovated. But yeah, so he was smart, he really was, and I got to tell you I was a real estate agent in Florida at the time and I would come here and visit and I'd go into some of these properties and I'd say, dad, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:What are you doing all the way out here in Loudoun County?
Speaker 1:Well, not even so much that it was his vision. You know he could look at something that I would say, ah, you know I would. It wasn't the shiny penny on the street, let me put it that way and he could envision what it could be. And he was right. I got to give him kudos there.
Speaker 2:So yeah, he definitely visionary for sure, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's definitely a visionary. For sure, absolutely, absolutely. And you know there was risk involved. I mean, god forbid the market had swung the other way or something. But he identified it as not likely, and he was right.
Speaker 2:He was right. Wow smart man. He had a good hunch. How many properties do you guys manage now in the area?
Speaker 1:Well, we still manage family-owned properties, so there's about 60 within our family and then there's another. Well, there's a total of just about 300 properties we manage and really we kind of stay at that level. We're kind of a quirky company where we don't take on more than we want to stay at a certain level, you know, to give the service that we provide.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and what services do you provide your clients? Yeah, I know property management is a broad area.
Speaker 1:It sure is. Um, we are available 24 seven. Uh, we don't have an answer service. It's my husband and I picking up the phone at 2 am, 3 am, to run over if a hot water heater bursts or there's some sort of an emergency. We do the inspections, we do the repair calls, we do the maintenance, we deal with the HOA, we collect the rent, we go to court on the owner's behalf if they're in. You know, I don't know whatever country they're in, you know.
Speaker 1:I'm the one filing the court papers and going to court. We have a lot of court experience, not because we've rented to bad people, but often the clients that we've taken on were folks that rented to somebody that perhaps they should not have. And that's kind of where we came in. And you know, I don't do as much as that anymore because, a I'm not a lawyer, you know, I never have been and B I just you know it's a lot of work.
Speaker 2:So that's where you know went to outsource.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, we recommend things to them, you know, we will, we'll, we'll point them in the right direction to get, yeah, to get, get help in the right places. But but yeah, so it's. I love my job. I used to feel my father when I first started working with him. He said the one thing that concerns me, robin, is you're not tough enough. And I said okay, you know. So he said you, you know, you have to be willing to evict your mom on Christmas Eve. And I thought that's the worst thing I've ever heard. You know like that's dreadful. But people can tear your heart out with their stories and I'm not talking about tenants, I'm talking about everybody. It can be tenants, it can be tenants, it could be owners, it could be whomever. So you definitely want to do your best to try to. You know it's hard. You have to enforce the lease. The lease is what you have to enforce. You know, good, bad or indifferent, it's what everybody signed and that's what you have to enforce.
Speaker 1:I used to feel like the tax collector in the Bible, but I don't so much anymore, because I feel like if I was which I could be tomorrow, you know, if I or you or anybody were on the other side of that. How would they want to be treated? And I try to treat them the way I'd want to be treated, and so I've been known to show up to evictions with donuts, and I mean honestly, I'm not even kidding about that. I had a lovely sheriff that used to do the evictions and she said I don't know how you do it, robin, but when I show up for evictions usually it's a pile of stuff. She goes, your people, even if they can't clean the carpets they vacuumed. She's like what the heck? And I go. Because I'm nice, I give them coupons for storage.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm like help them in their time of need. Yeah, you know, and it's funny because some of those folks I mean people, anybody can fall on hard times. Anybody can lose a job, Anybody can lose a spouse, Anybody can have children that are sick, or I mean, you know. And can have children that are sick, or I mean you know, and are there people?
Speaker 1:that make bad decisions. Absolutely Excuse me triple it over my words there, but for the most part it's just life that happens and those people typically come back around and we help them again.
Speaker 2:You know we rent them something else I was going to say what's it like to walk someone through that process?
Speaker 1:It's fine because I'm not hiding from them and they're not hiding from me. I'm usually very upfront with this is what's going to happen next, and you know I'm sympathetic with what's going on, but I tell them I don't have a choice but enforce this. So let's talk about your options. If you choose to do this, this is the way it will. Options If you choose to do this, this is the way it'll go. If you choose to do that, that is the way it will go, and this, I feel, would save you money, but that's up to you. If you want to seek legal counsel, I understand that's fine, you know.
Speaker 1:I lay it out there you know, and if an owner asks me to do something that is not kosher, I won't do it. I won't. I've had owners fire me before because I wouldn't take back from the security deposit money that I couldn't justify in the lease that they had a right to, and both times that that happened they came back a year later and asked me to please take them back on again because they learn you can't do that.
Speaker 2:It's not a good business practice.
Speaker 1:It's not. You have to be honest with people, because that's when people feel bad about what they do is when they're ripping off people.
Speaker 2:I honestly feel that way and leaves a bad taste in the tenant's mouth. Ripping off people. I honestly feel that way and leaves a bad taste in the tenant's mouth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everybody, everybody that's challenging it is. I had one owner tell me one time Robin, I keep trying to take you over the dark side.
Speaker 2:But you just won't go. True story you must find something very rewarding about what you do, what do you find most rewarding about?
Speaker 1:There's a lot that I find rewarding. I mean, I feel like anybody can do anything for a living, but they should take pride in what they do, if they're going to do it at all, and I think that helping people get into a property is a big deal. Everybody needs a roof over their head. Everybody needs affordable housing. I can't control the market. I can't control the numbers. You know, I'm like an accountant. When I go to renew a lease, I have to go to the owner and say this is what has rented recently around your property, you know.
Speaker 2:So you do your comps?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do my comps and I make you know. I just give them the numbers. I'm the accountant, so it's hard, especially in this area. A lot of prices went up very quickly and I think that the misconception is that that owners really gouge people by going way up in rent. But the other side of that story is a lot of owners did not increase rents for two years through COVID and then they ended up increasing rents all at one time and they got three years worth of increases. So I think that's the side of it that you know, while COVID was going on, there was a lot of homeowners associations that their dues went up. The taxes still went up, all those things went up and all of it affects the bottom line. Utility costs went up.
Speaker 2:And evictions went down right.
Speaker 1:Actually there were all kinds of laws passed where you had to, and there was all kinds of post-COVID laws that came out that prevented evictions unless you did this, that and the other, and you had to accept payment plans and all this kind of stuff. We lost, I believe, two tenants, but everybody else we kept whole, meaning landlords and tenants. There were some programs out there where tenants could apply for grants. I had some tenants that were great and they did it and it was no problem. I had other tenants that I think it was paralysis of analysis. So I actually got on the phone and went through the process with these tenants and helped them sign up online. We kept them whole, you know, and got through COVID and the landlords were good, the tenants were good and yeah, thank God and you're able to keep the peace between the two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you know, if they live there, they obviously like the place they want to stay and the owner just needs to pay their mortgage. And a lot of the mortgage companies were saying, oh well, you can defer the payment, but that messes up the owners. I believe it messes up the owners, you know mortgage yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm like please don't do that. Yeah, I'm not comfortable with it, that this is going to come out okay, Because you know, if you've ever dealt in mortgage or anything, you know they tell you one thing, but there's no urgency on their part, the mortgage company. I'm saying, Right, but yeah, everybody came out okay on that. And it was very tough in property management because we couldn't go in and do inspections as freely as we used to be able to, so sometimes I had to do it via video and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Because people didn't want people in their houses.
Speaker 1:Well, and not only that, but you know we're concerned about the public too. We don't want to. You know, I think I had COVID three times. My husband had it three times or four times, because we're around the public all the time and we don't want to go into a the public all the time and we don't want to go into a property and get them sick and we don't want them to get us sick, and we have a staff of people. The day that COVID was announced that, you know, everybody should go home and all this stuff we had laptops that we purchased for all of our staff, sent them home and had them working remotely within, I mean, that very day. So we never missed a.
Speaker 2:You didn't miss a beat.
Speaker 1:No, it was great, and we had online payment of rent set up. We had all of that, so you know thank.
Speaker 2:God, it was a good way to pivot. Yeah, it was. What are you guys doing for marketing and advertising these days to bring people in?
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, we do a little bit of everything. We always have. I'm big on internet advertising. When I first came to this area, 75% of the population was age 44 and younger. That's not the case anymore. You know, we have our population is aging, which is great, which is great, but 75% was ages 44 and younger which meant if we didn't use a lot of internet advertising, you kind of missed the boat.
Speaker 1:You know you really did so. True story early on, when I came, I came on with my father. I, he, he bless his heart, he's, he could sell. He could sell anything in the world. He's a great salesman but he's not a secretary. He had a non-coalating you know copier. He had no internet. He, you know no internet.
Speaker 2:You know website anything like that Well, it was. What year was it? It was? Well 99, pretty much Okay. So right on the cusp of yeah.
Speaker 1:So what happened was? It was very funny because I came on and all these people are calling every day and they're asking me the same question what properties do you have available, what properties do you know? And I was like dad, I can't do this anymore. I'm like pirating off the same information. It's just too much, you know. And so I said I'm going to create a website. And I literally created and you're going to cringe when you hear this, but I created a website using Microsoft Publisher and I did this with the help of everybody that was coming in to work for AOL. At the time. They were opening a branch and so they decided that they were going to open this branch. And I had all these AOL people contacting me saying I need a place to rent. And I'm saying and I need a website, let's work together. This is perfect, I'm using Microsoft Publisher. And they're like what?
Speaker 2:I said I don't care you were doing it, you were figuring it out.
Speaker 1:I said what are meta tags? What are you know all these things? And within three days I had that sucker made and I published it and sent it out there and so that I could say go to the website, go to the website. And the funny thing was is because our company name is Brown Carrera Realty, porsche Carrera sent us a very snarky letter, carrera. And so they were like you will cease and desist and not use this name any longer, and blah, blah, blah. And it was comical because I freaked out when I got the letter. I'm like, oh my God, what have I done?
Speaker 2:It's a nationwide company sending tiny little people yeah.
Speaker 1:And so what happened was? My dad said I got this, and so he wrote back to the company. With all due respect, this name has been in my wife's family since the early 1600s, and I can prove it. And so they wrote back.
Speaker 2:sorry, you actually got an apology from them on letter.
Speaker 1:And he said my favorite color is red. But he didn't get a Porsche.
Speaker 2:Wouldn't that have been something? Next day shows up in your driveway. Sorry, no but sweet.
Speaker 1:I mean it was, it was cute, but yeah, does your dad still live around? Here he does. He lives locally. He's 83 now and he's wonderful. You know he's still my buddy and he's retired. He's been retired for a long, long time but he was pretty much my lunch buddy. We'd go to lunch and he'd go home.
Speaker 2:Well, that's nice, you still have him close by, he'd go home and I'd send him home. Well, that's nice, you still have him close by.
Speaker 1:And he taught me you know a lot about property management that I would not have learned in a standard office. I mean, it's investing and running a return on investments and all that.
Speaker 2:True life skills. Yeah, what advice would you give to someone trying to get into property management?
Speaker 1:What advice would you give to someone trying to get into property management? My advice is you have to be set up for it, and it'd be like going from residential real estate to commercial real estate without the right forms, without the right lingo, without the right you know. In property management it's probably the quickest way to end up in court because instead of selling a property and you're kind of done with it, you inherit the folks that are renting the property for the next year or two or three and there's certain steps you have to go through as far as recording the condition of the property at move-in and the tenant then has a chance to do their walkthrough, and then at move-out and doing inspections, and it's a lot to it and there's different court expectations on what normal wear and tear is. A lot of times folks will think that if you know you were to take over a property, you know, or I were to take over a property today, that three years from now there would be no wear and tear and if there is, they're totally responsible. That's not the way the courts view it. You know there's a life expectancy to the carpet and to the paint and things like that. That's much different than when it's a primary residence For sure. So that can be a little difficult to navigate with owners and tenants. For that matter, you know, normal wear and tear is maybe the couch scuffing the wall. It is not holes in the wall going down the staircase from when they moved in or moved out, you know so it's kind of you know, when the lines are on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, tell me a little bit about the recent awards that you've won in property management.
Speaker 1:Actually they're not necessarily. We are a full service real estate company. We do sales. We are a full-service real estate company. We do sales, we do listing of property and stuff and we do primarily residential. But we also do commercial because some of our investors have commercial in their portfolio. So we lease out commercial and residential.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I'm involved in is I've been lucky enough to be one of the board members for the Dulles Area Association of Realtors I'm the treasurer currently but great organization. They're really wonderful and very good to the agents around here here. A while back, several years ago, they had me write some classes as far as working with renters and working with the management of property and so forth, and they decided that they wanted to create a two-hour course out of that. So I went ahead and wrote it into a two-hour course with all the highlights and they sent it off to the powers that be. I don't know if it's Depor or you know Virginia Realtors, but anyways they approved the course for a two-hour course and I give that at the DAR office a couple times a year, that's great.
Speaker 1:But it's a great course, for it's funny because I always expect brand new agents to take it and a lot of the very seasoned agents take it because I think that they want to refresh themselves on the forms and the procedures and stuff like that on working with tenants. So it's it's fun, but I was very proud of that.
Speaker 2:Congratulations. That's awesome, thank you.
Speaker 1:And I got this is I'm very proud of this little puppy. I got an award for Educator of the Year for 2020. And it's just. You know, it takes a lot of work to write those courses and get them approved, but anyway, so that was cool.
Speaker 2:And it takes someone with clearly a lot of experience in the field.
Speaker 1:I mean I think yes, yes, I also give the continued ed on the law portion of the Virginia Landlord Tenant Act, because these courses are typically given by attorneys, which is great and I know attorneys are way more educated on law than I would ever be but I don't think the delivery is always from a real estate perspective. So I asked if I could give that end of the course just teaching about the Virginia Landlord Tenant Act. And they said by all means. And I started doing it and I've, you know, they've run it through the channels above and they're like, yeah, this class is fine, you know, and so I kind of give it from the realtor's perspective of what they should know about that, not the attorney's perspective.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I, just recently you were talking about awards I was so proud. We went to the Dara Awards thing and I had myself and two other agents in my office, jeannie Brown and Chris Kilpatrick. We all won top producer awards and then I was able to be one of the seven people, I think, selected for the Circle of Excellence which was wonderful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, congrats, that's awesome and I had won that a few years back and it's a wonderful award, so very proud of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you deserve it. You've clearly been in the industry for a long time See my gray hair A lot of knowledge. Are there any last parting words you'd like to leave us with in regards to business advice, property management advice? You know I think that any.
Speaker 1:I learned something one time in a class through DAR and it was really interesting A guy was talking about. You can have a job, a career or a calling. And a job is somebody who sits there and they watch the clock on the wall and they're ready to go home all the time. A career is somebody who really doesn't notice the time. They're just working but they're just dying to get to the weekend, but they enjoy their job, they're okay. And then there's a calling. A calling is where you really don't care what time it is, you're involved in what you're doing. You like that you're able to do something.
Speaker 1:I think that real estate for some people it can be a calling and I think it is for me. I love that I have an opportunity to be of help to somebody else and they're quite often of help to me. So it's a two-way street. We try very hard to treat not only the owners but also the tenants like neighbors and listen to what they have to say, and I don't feel like if I go into any place that anybody's going to be giving me a dirty look or you know, I'm very open with people, so I think we do pretty good that way.
Speaker 1:One thing that we started doing a long time ago and I can't remember when, but every Christmas, instead of doing Christmas cards, we stopped doing that and we started doing a donation to a company in the area not a company, a charity in the area and so what we would do is we would give a certain dollar donation. And so what we would do is we would give a certain dollar donation and then we'd send out a newsletter to all the you know, electronically, to all of our tenants, our owners, our everybody, saying, hey, a donation was made on your you know, on behalf of all that do business with our company, in lieu of a Christmas card. We hope this is OK. So we've, we've given money to Smile Train to have surgery for two children. We've done, uh St Jude's. We've done um a uh military uh retirement home. We made them um uh bags for their, their walkers. We've done.
Speaker 2:That's great you guys have found ways to give back to the community.
Speaker 1:So I highly recommend for any company, rather than waste, you know, $1,000 on pre-printed Christmas cards that may end up in the trash, you know.
Speaker 2:And they will, they always do.
Speaker 1:Yep. So take a minute, give it to a charity and let people know that they did it on behalf of those that do business with you.
Speaker 2:You'll make a great impact to your community and you'll do something good, thank you, and I love how you said job, career and calling. You've clearly found your calling.
Speaker 1:I think I have. I think I have. I'm grateful for everything I have.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, robin, for coming in today. Thanks, nice to meet you. It was a pleasure talking to you.