Early real estate, watching dad do an add-on.
1960’s
Dad and family Realtor John Sobrato were early inspirations. Dad, a high school teacher, began buying rental homes with John’s help and retired at the age of 45 as a result. John and his three Realtors consistently out-performed much larger real estate brokerages by simply working harder for his clients, or “hustling,” as he called it.
1970’s
As a teenager, helping dad with his rental homes became a real-world education in real estate. Both Dad and John shared the principles behind their success and how they built real estate wealth. A third inspiration was Uncle Al, who managed Coldwell Banker offices with a calm, no-pressure approach. To this day, we still talk real estate.
1985
Soon after getting married, Therese and I began our real estate journey. With limited funds, we structured a deal with some seller financing and bought a fixer-upper. After renovating it, we sold it a year later for a solid profit. With those proceeds, we bought another fixer-upper, and a townhouse to live in.
Fixer-upper after renovations.
Before renovations.
1987 – 1989
We continued doing fixer-upper projects and became licensed real estate agents to represent ourselves. Some of the contractors we hired and friends, asked if we could help them buy a home. So we did that too, and really liked it. We joined the largest real estate firm in California and were the youngest among 55 agents in our local office. We also did our first major remodel, converting a 1,100 square-foot one-story home into a 2,700 square-foot two-story. After that, we started to build homes from ground up, and formed a real estate development company.
1989 Two-Story Remodel.
1991 – 1994
1991 was our third year as Realtors, and we were honored to receive the President’s Silver award – top 3% in California for successful home sales. We continued to build and renovate homes, and would soon do our first subdivision – of eight homes.
1991 Real Estate Office Party.
1994 Eight Home Subdivision.
1995
We started our own real estate brokerage – Fox Real Estate. With our experience as both Realtors and real estate investors, we created a menu of services to fit the wide range of client types of the time. From first time buyers to experienced real estate investors, we provided a menu of services and prices to meet their needs.
Company sign at our first office.
1996 – The new way of helping buyers and sellers became an instant success. We hired a couple of Realtors to help with the demand, then created HomeFox.com as one of the first real estate websites. HomeFox.com provided helpful real estate information for our clients, and reduced the number of calls into the office.
With nearly 100 home listings at a time, Therese
found dry-erase boards to be an early necessity.
1998
Our busiest year yet. We never had the desire to sell the most homes, but in 1998 it happened. We sold 114 homes, tops in the Bay Area per the San Francisco Business Times. We had taken HomeFox.com to a new level by creating an online program to share real estate documents with clients, reducing the number of face-to face meetings.
1999
Multiple news sources gave us credit for doing the first online real estate transactions. With the volume of home sales we were doing, we needed to be more efficient. The online program streamlined the process – a win for both us and our clients.
MSNBC & The Associated Press.
2001
This was a year of appearances on Channel 2’s Morning Show, plus several TV interviews about our Internet real estate program. They were live and kind of nerve-racking, but it was fun talking about real estate and the trends of the time.
Mornings on 2.
2005
This was ten years after opening our brokerage. We had 4 offices, 60 agents and a mortgage company.
2009
Now in our brokerage’s fifteenth year, we had added a property management company and started offering agent incentives to work from home.
2019
After two decades of owning and operating our own real estate brokerage, we joined Remax Accord. We stepped away from the day-to-day agent management and brokerage operations so we could devote more time to clients. Within a few months, we assembled a mastermind group of Realtors within the company that still meets to this day.
Remax Mastermind Group.
2021
In our 2nd full year with Remax we were honored to be recognized in the company’s top 10 among over 400 Realtors, and in the top 100 nationwide.
With Remax Accord Owner Jerry Stadler.
2025
This marked our 40th year in real estate. We celebrated by going to Maui with our family, bringing back memories of our first trip to the island in 1988.
Maui 2025.
Beyond Real Estate
We are Bay Area natives, undergrads at Saint Mary’s College. We live in Danville and are fortunate to be just a mile from our daughter, her husband and grandchildren.
We enjoy playing pickleball and still renovate homes. Helping the homeless has been something we’ve done for years, the Children’s Miracle Network is another.
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