Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Ashley Warren, Realtor with Infinity Pros

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

Ashley Warren specializes in helping people find their dream home in the Denver Metro area, whether that’s in the heart of the city or out in the mountains.Ashley was born and raised in Colorado, and she has a deep passion for this state and its unique lifestyle. When she’s not connecting people to homes, you can find her with her three Newfies or exploring Denver’s vibrant food scene with her husband Josh.She is part of a top-performing women’s team, Infinity Pros, and she never stops thinking about how a home is going to work best for her clients. Ashley’s goal is to understand her clients’ unique needs and preferences so that she can help them find the perfect home and community for their lifestyle, and make the transaction as simple as possible.Whether people are looking to buy or sell a home in the Denver area, Ashley is here to help. Let’s work together to find your perfect home!Learn more:https://www.linkedin.com/in/warrenashley/ & https://infinityprosre.com/Colorado Real Estate Leaders https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/colorado-real-estate-leaders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-ashley-warren-realtor-with-infinity-pros

Welcome to the Colorado Real Estate Leaders Podcast, brought to you by Trailstone Insurance Group, bringing you interviews with Colorado's best real estate and mortgage professionals, empowering you to understand the current trends in the housing market so you can make the American dream your reality. Enjoy today's episode. Well, it's a great day in Colorado and welcome to the Colorado Real Estate Leaders podcast. Today we have with us Ashley Warren, who's a realtor with Infinity Pro. Ashley, welcome to the program. Thank you. Hey, so I love talking with people and learning about how they do, what they do and why they do it. And that's a big word. Why, you know, we want to hear your, you know, passion and what draws you and what motivates you. But let's get started first with give us a little bit of your background and your story. And how did you get into real estate? Yeah. So my name is Ashley. I am a Colorado native and I am a realtor with Infinity Pros. I grew up predominantly in the Littleton area, but my dad lived in Lakewood and Denver, and then my mom lived

in Littleton, Lone Tree, and Highlands Ranch growing up. So it's kind of the running joke that I have been training for this career my whole life, getting acquainted with multiple neighborhoods. I have a bachelor's in psychology from CU, Denver, and a master's in strategic human resource management from D.U. And my former career was in marketing and compliance for Chipotle Mexican Grill. I started my real estate career in 2014. I mean, I don't even know how to say how that happened. It's probably just divine intervention because I think it's the best mix of my love for numbers, my business mind, and then my passion for relationships with people. And I kind of have just been running in real estate ever since. In my spare time, I am married. My husband's name is Josh. I have

three Newfoundlands. Their names are Wilbur. Or sorry, Walter, Bailey, and Rue. We had Wilbur. So you can find us getting coffee and pup cups. We used to have hobbies. We used to do a lot of cycling and rock climbing, but we just bought a 10-acre property up in Evergreen. And so now all of our free time consists of us cutting down trees. Yes. That's awesome. And so that, you know, it's really interesting you say, I don't even know what got me into, because it's kind of kind of interesting how, you know, when you look at a certain event in your life personally or professionally and go, this is a monumental event. This is a wonderful event. How did this come about? And you start tracing it back.

It's like, well, if it weren't for this, then this wouldn't have happened. Then if it weren't for that, then the other thing wouldn't have happened. And here we are. But whatever that point was that got you into the, industry, you had to have been aware and notice whatever that was and then take action. And I think that those are some things that are some really great life lessons for people to go, you know what, let's not hustle and bustle and get grinding so fast that we miss out on opportunities that are right in front of us each and every day. Yeah, for sure. Totally agree.

So give us a little bit of an idea of what type of client you work with. Do you specialize in any niches of clients? of clients or do you work with just whoever needs to get help with their real estate? So I work with buyers and sellers. I would say that, you know, I was younger when I started my career. So I naturally worked with a lot of first time home buyers. That has since transitioned into people buying up into their next home. I predominantly do people that are looking for their primary house.

So I do work a little bit with investors, but they're mostly my clients that are buying a second home or something like that. But I would say the majority of my business happens to be west of, I, no, yes, west of I-25, all north and south. I just run along the foothills. And that's really just as a result of where, you know, my referrals come from. But I will work with anyone. I just predominantly stay with residential real estate. That's what I know best. Yeah. Well, and you said move up buyers, right? So that's typically someone that is buying a house that they need a bigger place because they already are in a place and they need more size or space or whatnot.

Yes, or just a different location. I know for us, you know, the house we're in now, we just really wanted a bigger yard and that drove the sale. Yeah. Well, and you know, the thing is nothing wrong with any other type of segment or niche or whatnot, but let's just compare. that to a first-time homebuyer. That's a whole different type of a need. And I'm sure you do work with first-time home buyers. But when we're talking about someone that already owns a home and is looking to move into a different one, bigger, different geographical location, they already know the process and there's special extra needs there like, hey, I need to buy this house. And I don't want to lose out on the contract, but I got to sell this house. What do we do? So talk a little bit about some of those nuances that you're able to work with your clients on in that respect. Yeah. Well,

I do always like to tell people your first house helps you figure out what you want in your next house. And I have found that a lot. But when people are looking to sell and buy, a lot of times the process is really trying to figure out, do you need to sell before you buy or can you find your replacement home before you sell? And a lot, you know, right now, and it has been the case for the last several years, inventory is so low. It continues to be low. It's a little bit better, but it's hard to find houses right now. A lot of people don't want to sell their house until they find the right replacement because they love their house. They're just looking for something bigger, different, you know, that works better for their family. And so that really is the biggest strategy piece is working between the agent and the lender to figure out what products work best, what loan works best, to not move in a pan.

because we never want sellers who already have a home they enjoy to then all of a sudden be scrambling to find a house for their family. And so I would say it's really important to strategize between myself and the lender on what the best case scenario is for you so that we can find a great next house without pushing you out of your current house. You know, you brought up two things that I want to go a little bit deeper on, which is don't move within a panic. and strategize. And I think those are so powerful to think about because the more frenetic that we get, we're going to make a bad decision or we're going to make a hasty decision or we're going to miss something. And when you can take a step back and have a strategy, then even when things get a little

bit tighter, then you can just fall back and rely on that strategy. So talk a little bit about how you're doing that and how you're doing that with your lender partners, because that's a huge. opportunity there. Yeah. So the strategy on the front end is, you know, we never start looking at houses until we have a plan. You know, I think that buyers can, I think a lot of buyers believe they need to see the house before they know what they want. And there's a process to that for sure. There's an elimination process and it's hard to see what, it's hard to know what you want until you're in there. But you do know the location, you know your budget, you know, you know things that are.

non-negotiables. And I would say strategizing around those non-negotiables is very, very key before you start putting yourself in a house that you're going to fall in love with and you're going to have to go outside of those boundaries that you're comfortable with in order to get it. And then once you find, so it's having the patience in that process, but being able to move quickly once you find a house. and being as prepared as you can be is going to help you execute that faster.

And then with the lender, I work with a lender. His name's Matt DeLusio. He's my preferred lender. Obviously, we'll work with anyone. But Matt is so dialed into his process. And in that has just helped me really, really support my buyers with so many different products, whether it's a bridge loan, you know, a conventional. that we can hold on to a little bit and recast when we sell the house.

But again, it's just a conversation with your lender and just knowing being so familiar with your options so that, again, you don't fall in love with the house and then you're scrambling to make it work because in those scrambling moments, you're going to make a decision that you might regret later and that's just never a position we want to put our buyers or our sellers in. Let's shift gears for a minute and talk about personally. What's your favorite part of being in the real estate industry and helping people find those? I mean, is that go back to your education or psychology?

Yeah. So I really do love the connection with people. My favorite part of real estate probably comes from my own personal experience in real estate as well. And that's just the opportunity to build wealth within owning a house. and it happens naturally. You don't have to be an active participant in doing anything. You know, like, I'm not a day trader. I would never know how to do that.

But we bought our first house when I was 21. And at the time, I was working full time. I was in school full time. And we had no money. Like, I don't know who decided to get us alone, but very grateful for it. And, you know, we were, it was a very passive investment for us, aside from the fact that we made our mortgage payment, but we were in school, we were working, and we had about $10,000 into that house, and it was every single penny that we had.

And as a result of just natural appreciation over the course of the market, we have never put another dollar into our homes. So the equity we built on that first house in Evergreen, we sold it, we put that into our house in Green Mountain, sold that a few years later, and now it's in the house. that we own now. And it's just such an incredible wealth engine to see in real time and to be able to help people understand that because a lot of people, you know, especially first time homebuyers, it's hard.

It's hard to scrape together the money that you need. But to help them, you know, get to where they need to be and then three years later, show them their equity that they have. And it's, you know, they don't necessarily have to buy their forever home. initially, but to help them gather that wealth and build that equity and move it into another house, you know, two or three times until they're really where they want to be. It's just such an incredible opportunity. I actually did the math just for this podcast. The $10,000 that we put in has 80 times, is that the right way to say it?

80 times itself. Like I would have never been able to save that money, you know? And it's just a natural occurrence of the Denver market. And so we live in an incredible real estate market where it's just naturally going to appreciate. And I love showing people how to utilize that for themselves. The interesting thing with that investment is if you had tried to take that amount of money and turn it into the end result money, the risk of volatility there would have just been through the roof. And you would have ended up most probably with less money than you started. So the security there and then throw in some tax deductibility, talk to your tax accountant, you know, and it just makes those numbers even more astounding. Right. It's just incredible. I mean, there's no way we could have done it. For one, we didn't know. We just knew we didn't want to rent. And then we turn around and we're like, oh my gosh. We have money to go buy something else that we're going to love. I will say our first home, we did not love. And that's okay. It got us to where we are now.

And as you said, it was all passive. You didn't, you had to live someplace already. Right. As you said, the multiplier was incredible. Right. So I love showing people how to walk through that themselves. You know, when you talk about working with people that own a home and are looking to get into a different home, are you showing them the same strategy that you just laid out, which is maybe you don't sell the current house you're in. maybe if you plan ahead enough and you take out theoretically if it works numberwise you take out a home equity line so you have some money to use for the down payment but you maintain that house save it as a rental and you move into the next place so that you're kind of doing reverse investor yes i love showing people that as an option um we host first time investor classes that are you know i don't work with investors that are just writing offer after offer that's not my

pace and that's not my relationship style. But I love showing people who have a primary house how to keep it and pull out some equity and buy another primary and keep that as a rental and get those tax benefits

and get all the awesome things that come with it. It's such a cool thing to show people. Yeah, I mean, that's a and you know what, I'm sure that you have to think about something no matter what, how you lay out what you've done, And you show, I heard the voice inflection, you mentioned there's like as an option. This is not, well, you just would be insane if you don't do what I did.

This is like, hey, here's something to consider. And if you want to do it, here's the path forward. If you don't, great, we'll go this direction. But here's just some things to consider. So I think that is a huge piece that people, it sounds to me like people you work with don't feel pushed into a box or a push into a corner. You're just educating them and teaching them on what some options are. Totally.

We, it's funny because we're actually getting ready to remodel our kitchen. My husband owns a plumbing company, which is a blessing and a curse. He sees, you know, they do massive renovations every day. And so he's like, we're going to do ours. Like, that's, you're going to do it. I'll be here. But, you know, it's an option for people. And I just love, so those designers, they ask me, like, do you just fall in love with houses all day long?

And I'm like, I really don't because I'm not in them thinking about myself and thinking about our family and I'm constantly visualizing them for the family that's buying them. And so in that, I, to your point, I don't tell them. Like, you'd be crazy not doing what I am doing because every situation is different. And I'm just here to educate, give them their options, and then help them walk through what is the best decision for them. 100%. So what are some of the things that you would point to in your business and your career that you focus on it to grow and to expand your client base?

Because it sounds to me like you're not into it for the money. You're into it for the relationships and serving your clients. So what does that look like for you? Yeah. So people that ask me how I grow my business, I just like, I don't know. I just work hard. I mean, that's like the truth of it. I have always just worked really hard.

and my business has taken care of itself. I really, my natural default in life is two things, working hard and really loving and building, like growing with people, building relationships with people. And when those two things happen naturally and I have a total numbers brain, I just think it's very easy to provide an exceptional experience for clients. And I remember a few years ago,

I asked someone else who's a business owner, a different industry, but I said, hey, do you have any advice for me to grow and scale my business? And he said, it's easy, just outwork the next person. And I was like, well, I think I already do that. And I know how to do that. So I just doubled down on it. And so, you know, in real estate, that looks like being really detailed, not, you know, not make or making sure no stone is unturned, you know, having great connections for clients, connecting them to realtors and, you know, lenders, insurance partners that know what they're doing. And that's just my passion. I love making the process easy and simple for them and building a relationship in the meantime,

because I want these people to stay connected to me after the closing. I never want someone to go to closing. And I'm like, oh, good, I don't have to see her anymore. I am in it for the long haul. because I do, I care about them and their life and how that fits into the real estate process. And so, yeah, it's just, it's been a natural thing. The progression of my business has been natural and I've been super grateful that all nine years of my business, it's been all repeat and referral business. And, you know, that's hard to cultivate. And so I've been just very fortunate.

100%. You know, and you ever heard how some of the cliche, says, you know, oh, the dogs can smell fear and people can smell commission breath on you. And those are just analogies to have people realize that, you know what, just be calm in the face of something. And when people can tell that you are just a pushy, pushy person, you know, a little bit of red flags pop up. But when they can tell what you just described, which is, I just serve. I just give. I just be good. And I treat people like humans and I teach them. And then if it works out, it works out. If it doesn't, we'll stay friends and it'll circle back

around, you know, maybe one day down the road. People can just tell that. And I think that that right there is just, that's probably a wonderful business philosophy in and of itself. Yeah, for sure. I believe that a rising tide lifts all boats. And I'm not in it just to help the people that are giving me a paycheck. I mean, I have, I have people that refer me business that have never bought a house from me. They're probably not going to buy a house from me because they're not in the position of life to move. And I still want to be a resource. for them. And so I think that when you just understand your niche and where you can add value, I mean, the business is going to come. You don't have to worry about that.

100%. What do you find is some of the best ways that you connect with and serve your clients, you know, because a lot of people are, you know, just technology text. And sometimes people are phone call or visits. Do you have a mix of all of those or what is your preferred way? So years ago, and I'm still, I'm so bad, I have reviews. I know where to ask for them right now, but I'm so not technological. I'm the worst millennial there is. And so my clients used to ask me, where can I leave your review? I'm like, oh, I don't have that.

Just send people my way. But I would say the best way to connect technology-wise is really just send me a text message and we'll hop on the phone call. I know that's not great for 25-year-olds, so I will text you. But I love phone calls. But I would say, like, I really am a personal connector in, you know, especially when it comes to real estate because I do. I bought a house when I was 21.

I know what it's like to be a terrified first-time home investor. I have, you know, I know the experiential part of that moving up into multiple houses. We have a long-term rental and two short-term rentals in Florida. that I know what that's like. And so I love just connecting on the experience level of things with my clients. And I really feel like the best way to do that is over coffee or, you know, on a phone call. But I'll do text message if that's what we're going to do. Yep.

That's awesome. Well, speaking up, if so. Oh, go ahead. No, I want you to. I can't relate to I connect with people. Is that experience part? So a couple of years ago, it was probably four years ago at this point because I think this is my fourth year. I was trying to think of something that I could give to my clients that really they're just going to love and cherish for years.

I mean, not in a way that when they see it, they think, oh, Ashley is so great. I just wanted to be able to give them something that they would use. And I realized that one of the most cherished things we have as a family is our photos. You know, we have photos taken every year and it is as a direct result of one of my very good friends as a photographer. And so she reminds me every year like, hey, you need to put this on your calendar because otherwise I wouldn't. I mean, we get busy. We just, you know, we get distracted. And so I decided to start hosting a client appreciation event that is photo shoots for my clients. And so it's an opportunity for them to come get photos of their family.

you know, if nothing else, they get their holiday card out of it. But what's happened is year after year, they get updated photos and they have this moment in time captured for most people wouldn't really put it on the calendar, right? They just get distracted. And so I've been able to really connect with them in that way and provide this awesome gift for them, their families. And it's just such a cool experience. And, you know, shout out to my friend,

because I couldn't do that without her. But it's just been, it's, again, it's just been the coolest way to stay connected with my clients. Great way to stay connected. Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of staying connected, if someone is listening to this going,

I must get your help. What you said has resonated with me. Ashley, what is the best way that people can reach out and connect with you and learn more and go that way? Yeah. So the best way is my phone. My phone number is 7209338-1129. Otherwise, email is Ashley Warren, RE, like real estate at gmail.com.

Or you can probably find my car at Starbucks. It has drool on the sides probably from my dogs if I haven't made it to the car wash that day. But I'm always available for a conversation. Awesome. Well, thanks a million for coming on. been a real pleasure talking with you, Ashley. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Colorado Real Estate Leaders podcast, brought to you by Trailstone Insurance Group. To learn more about the topics mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.com.