Realtor.com® isn’t just a great place to find a home, it’s also home to more than 1,700 people in North America who come to work every day with the goal of being a trusted partner, helping people find and buy their dream home and sell with confidence.
On Sept. 30, we opened our second office in Austin, Texas – our eighth realtor.com office. We recently sat down with Erin Koops, director of partner success, to learn more about work, life, and home in one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S.
What do you do at realtor.com?
When prospective home buyers and sellers are looking at homes on realtor.com and ask to be connected with an agent, we take the time to understand each consumer’s specific needs, then match him or her to a local agent who fits those needs. I work with the brokerages and agents we partner with to provide this service. We, of course, want to make sure our partner agents know how to easily navigate the technology we use, so right now I’m helping to grow our training library.
How did you end up in Austin?
My wife and I always dreamed about living in a warm weather climate and enjoying an outdoor lifestyle. After enduring decades of Chicago winters, we decided not to wait for retirement to enjoy both. I’d been visiting friends in Austin for years, so knew the city had everything we were looking for in addition to great career opportunities.
What do you like most about living here?
Did I mention the gorgeous weather? All kidding aside, we’ve really fallen in love with the entrepreneurial spirit that is Austin. It’s inspiring to see so many independent companies and restaurants sprouting all over town and it’s amazing to watch how quickly businesses evolve and transform here, including countless tech start-ups. We’ve both benefited from that in our careers here in Austin – realtor.com actually has two offices in Austin, and I’m lucky enough to be one of 600 employees in those two offices.
Outside of work, my wife and I take full advantage of the year-round warm weather and hilly terrain to hike and bike. Our favorite weekends are spent road-tripping to tiny towns peppered all over the beautiful hill country or boating on Lake Travis. Hill Country is just gorgeous – it’s different than what many people imagine when they think of Texas.
Describe your current home.
Moving to Austin was a big change. My wife and I lived in a tiny high-rise apartment in the West Loop of Chicago – a very urban environment. Now we live in a big ranch-style home in a quiet southwest suburb of Austin. The house suits our lifestyle, though, since we can step out our back gate and take the dogs for a hike on the Violet Crown Trail (one of many trails snaking through Austin’s protected greenbelt).
It’s been nice to get to know the families in our neighborhood – and learn how to take care of a yard! But, in a fun twist, we can and still do walk to the grocery store, just like we did in Chicago. And I still enjoy my fill of city living during the week, sampling the restaurants, coffee houses and art studios that surround the new realtor.com Tech Center in East Austin.
How did you find your home?
Before we visited Austin to house hunt, we were constantly looking at homes on realtor.com. Online, my wife and I could get a sense of what we could afford and which neighborhoods looked like they might be a good fit. I loved being able to set up alerts so I could find out about new homes for sale as soon as they came on the market; it was always exciting to get a new notice! My wife loved the ability to filter for special features, like a 3rd garage for her home-gym.
I knew from my time working with brokers and agents across the country that realtor.com had the most MLS-listed for-sale homes among all national portals, and most of the listings are updated at least every 15 minutes – so we were much less likely to fall in love with a home only to learn it was no longer available.
In addition to our online house hunting, finding an agent that was right for us was huge! The agent we worked with is from a local Austin brokerage, and she really knew the city. We actually started working with her while we were still in Chicago, so as she got to know us, our agent helped us match neighborhoods to our personalities and understand the city from a different perspective. Thanks to her help, we narrowed down our search considerably, so we were able to find our first Austin home during a quick weekend visit.
Ultimately, our agent helped us feel so much more comfortable and excited in the otherwise overwhelming process of relocation, and in the end, we bought a home in her neighborhood, so she’s also now our neighbor and friend.
What advice would you give to someone who, like you, may be moving to a different city or state and is looking for a home?
It’s great to look and get excited, but you can only do so much online. The real magic happens when you visit in person, explore neighborhoods and start walking through homes with an agent, someone who really knows the ins and outs of the area.
So my advice is to connect with an agent sooner rather than later. They love guiding and welcoming transferees into the communities they call home. The right agent can be your city ambassador. Beyond helping you find a house, he or she can introduce you to the people and places that are part of what we all think of as “home.”