When this country was first founded, land was granted by the King of England to many of the original settlers. Others homesteaded outside of the boundaries into uncharted territory and forcibly took land from the native inhabitants. The order of law that developed was based mostly on family ownership and leaving property to heirs. Transferring property one to another was often done through marriage and increasingly, in the 18th and 19th centuries, through business transactions that were driven by family to family relationships and business ownership where real estate was part of an operating company or business establishment. Soon, in the early to mid 1800’s, real estate became a quite profitable investment in and of itself and “markets” for it specifically began to develop.

Brokers as we know them today started in the mid to late 1800’s . However, there were no “listings” per say. Through networking, someone would learn that a family was seeking to sell property and they would then “gentlemanly” circulate the information among people they knew who might have an interest to purchase or know of someone with potentially such an interest. Everything was “off-market” so to speak. This often resulted in a much better fit as there was no representative seeking to sell what was in his inventory, but more focus was on finding an able buyer or seller for the property at hand.

In fact, the casual association of local real estate agents being in the U.S. in the 1880’s resulting in about 15 real estate boards in selected cities around the country. Then in 1908, the National Association of Realtors was created with 19 boards and one state association. To make their objectives and intentions very evident, they called themselves the National Association of Real Estate Exchanges thus promoting the idea of networking to identify opportunities and create transactions.

NAR's first Board of Directors, 1909 (NAR Archives)

After more than a hundred and fifty years, selling real estate became an industry into itself and most recently, truly a mega industry with billions of dollars of consolidated companies and mega real estate acquisitions. Yet, there is a large segment of smaller to medium size owners who desire to return to a model more like than of the 1800’s. A model that is more personalized, more tailored to their family situation and more focused on servicing their unique needs with a strategic theme resulting in a better fit to their situation in acquiring property. That is the PPA model, one to locate properties that are not publicly marketed on even under consideration of sale until we make the contact. For some real estate owners the model of almost two hundred years ago is a much better option. We make it work.