Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Walsh.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I became very interested in real estate in my early 20s, in the midst of the 2005 boom. At the time, I was a floor installer and had no idea how home buying worked, but a good friend of mine had just started a real estate career and educated me. I bought my first house that year.
By the time, the market crashed in 2008, I owned a few investment properties and managed a family investment property. I could sense that investing was going to become risky, so I had to figure out a way to hedge the incoming economic challenges. I knew I had an opportunity to apply the knowledge I collected in the three years of investing—along with my background in construction—to help serve a variety of uninformed homebuyers and novice investors, so I got my real estate license that year.
I had every intention of joining an established firm, but after an uninspiring experience meeting with a broker, I began to talk to my friend about starting our own company. He went to get broker’s license and we started our own brokerage in 2009. In the beginning, it was just the two of us working out of the back of his townhouse in Braintree. I was new to the business and now a partner at a new company.
Needless to say, it was a very challenging way to start my career in real estate. With little resources or training, I began to experiment with marketing and lead generation techniques. We slowly but surely hustled our way through the worst real estate market since the Great Depression. We learned to be flexible. We changed our strategies as markets shifted. We focused on the bustling rental market. We educated first-time homebuyers on Fannie Mae incentive programs or federal downpayment assistance. We helped struggling homeowners sell their underwater homes through short sale negotiations.
These years were tough and a lot of real estate agents left for different careers, but we used it as an opportunity to learn. By 2012, an energy started to infect the market and everyone got excited about real estate again. My business was growing and I began to see that there were ways that I could grow my business and expand my reach. I had survived the downturn and things were starting to click for me.
There is nothing easy about being new in the real estate business—you need to be willing to roll up your sleeves and face the fears we all share. People will reject you, you will fall short, people will doubt your capabilities. The amount of resilience it took to push through the early years prepared me for when the real work began in 2012. At this point, we began taking on agents and our personal businesses were rapidly growing. I developed some solid relationships with investors—they saw the tide rising.
Once again, I had to shift with opportunity and learn. I educated myself on things like zoning and development cost, cap rates and cash flow. I had to jump in into a realm that was far beyond anything I had done before. In 2015, we merged with another partner and began consolidating a portfolio of real estate for a large investment firm. Over the subsequent three years, our company grew from 12 agents to over 60.
We opened four offices and our sales volume was five times higher than in previous years. Nothing has taught me more about myself and my character than operating a company with this many people. When I became willing to teach and be a leader, my experience with the company took a new form. I found a new excitement in helping our agents grow their personal businesses. I got to watch people come into a career and be willing to expose themselves to all the obstacles that the industry presents.
To be in a business where you get to watch people push themselves and thrive in that vulnerable place of the unknown is a gift. This year I decided to leave and start a new real estate venture with my business partner Dave Anderson. Real Estate is in a massive transition where technology and the return to valuing community and local expertise. We saw a need to start a company where these two pieces are the cornerstone.
ACCESS will change the way we approach real estate. We plan to bridge the consumer to their neighborhood and their surroundings while adding value to there overall real estate experience… long term we plan to give buyer and sellers unique Access to the Greater Boston Area with direct lines to our in-house experts to transition out of the city into the North Shore, South Shore, and Metro West.
Our focus will be on creating an experience where the agent adds value and provides you with the lifestyle options and information that come with buying into a new neighborhood.
Markets of course have ups and downs, but in terms of your story overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It has not been a smooth road at all. At my previous office, we were fortunate enough to have an excellent culture that kept us positive even in the darkest times. We always had a willingness to embrace the discomfort of growth, and I hope to bring this ethos to Access.
In my career, I’ve faced the fear of not knowing if I was going to be successful and I tried a lot of things that didn’t work. But I have learned that failure is an essential ingredient to success.
I’ve also struggled with communication. Communication is vital—the lifeblood of any healthy business. I’ve realized over time that healthy communication and transparency breed a culture that people to be a part of. When you spend a third of your life somewhere, it should be an environment that people feel connected to.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Access Real Estate – what should we know?
ACCESS specializes in creative real estate solutions for the everyday consumer and the seasoned investor. Over the last few years, I started seeing a lot of companies enter the real estate marketplace and compete for the same market share. Although we plan to remain a conventional real estate brokerage, our methods of assisting buyers and sellers will shift away from the average experience.
The current methods other firms use to find property for buyers becomes terribly unsatisfying because of the lack of inventory, sellers receive a very baseline service and there is no transparent marketing plan that they can hold their agent accountable to. We want to change that by going above and beyond listing the house for sale or setting you up in a saved search with auto email updates. We want to add value to the buyers and sellers experience. We also want to give flexibility to our agents and allow them to be as creative as possible in their own process.
We want to be an agent-focused company that offers the proper tools and support needed to maximize an agent’s potential. Between cutting-edge software and collective creation of original marketing content, we plan to be efficient as a group. There is nothing more exciting than a group of people working together to accomplish a common goal.
ACCESS will revolve around this concept. We believe that we are an evolving experiment rather than a rigid model.
If you had to start over, what would you have done differently?
If I were to start over, I would avail myself of more teachers. I have learned over the years that success leaves evidence. When we started Dream Realty, there was just two of us with the collective experience of 5 years in the business. I always tell agents to use their resources! They will be top producers light-years faster than I became one.
This is kind of a paradox, but I would also focus less on what other companies were doing. For many years I tried to keep up with what other companies were doing when all I should do is focus on what we’re doing. What we do at ACCESS is great. People want originality, not another version of the same old thing.
Contact Info:
- Address: 12 Ericsson Street Dorchester MA 02122
- Website: findyouraccess.com
- Phone: 617-825-8000
- Email: alex@findyouraccess.com
- Instagram: @access.boston
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