Back to Basics

The other day I was on the phone with Mark Z. He's a leader of one of the top producing Keller Williams Realty teams in the country. The Mark Z. Home Selling Team closed over $59 million in sales transactions, just short of 500 deals, last year.

He and his team are on target to eclipse 500 deals in 2015. That means they are closing more than two sales every business day this year. With that kind of volume, I was certain Mark Z. must be West Coast, East Coast or Texas based. That's where most of the hottest housing markets are, right?

But here's the thing: Mark Z. isn't an associate broker on either coast, and is based nowhere near Texas. His market is the Detroit metro area – the most maligned city in the U.S., for goodness' sake!

I'm especially taken aback because I was born just outside of Detroit and have watched its downfall for decades. For the first year of my life, we lived on Seminole Street off East Jefferson Ave, near the then glamorous Whittier Hotel where my dad and uncle worked. The Whittier was the grand dame of the Motor City. It was where the Beatles spent the night on their Detroit stop during their 1964 U.S. tour.

Mark Z. and his team built a business around an area that's home to the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, is notorious for its exceptionally high major crime rates, has record unemployment and there are over 70,000 abandoned homes in the city.

What's even more remarkable is the fact that Mark Z. and his team's numbers are not a fluke. They closed $10 million in sales in 2007; more than doubled that number in 2009 with $22 million; and more than doubled it again in 2012 with over $51 million in closed sales.