To This Fort Worth Sports-Writer-Turned-Real Estate-Agent, Selling Is Talking, Relating

By Rick Mauch
Special Contributor

Rusty Hall never intended to become a real estate agent. But fate made the decision for the retired sportswriter.

“I had bought a home a few years earlier, then Hurricane Harvey wiped out two of my family’s homes in Rockport,” he said. “My father and stepmother and my step-grandparents lost their homes. My father was about to turn 80 and my grandparents were in their 90s.”

He took them all into his home, and over the next year worked to get everyone a new place to live.

“I found that I enjoyed helping everyone find a place where they would feel at home, and I enjoyed the process of house-hunting,” he said.

And so, his new career was about to be born.

He called one of his oldest and best friends with the Century 21 Judge Fite office in Fort Worth.

“I quickly realized that if I could sell about 12 houses a year I’d make about as much in a year as I had made in the newspaper business,” he said. “I took the leap.”

So Hall retired from newspapers in early 2019 and became a licensed agent. Then, COVID-19 hit shortly after, giving him an early challenge in his new career.

“Not exactly the start I expected,” he said. “The upside was that I was able to stay busy by getting some excellent training through the Judge Fite Company over the next several months, but it took close to nine months to sell my first home. It’s hard to meet people when you can’t get out and meet people.”

Things are much better now, largely because, “you’d better be a self-starter and be able to stay motivated and active. Activity breeds results,” he said.

Hall said years of being a sports journalist also helped.

“If you can interview guys like a John McEnroe, a Gale Sayers or a Bobby Valentine, then talking to a prospective client is a piece of cake,” he said. “Real estate is all about talking and relating to people.

“One area that really relates to my career in sports is working with statistics. I’m always looking at stats when it comes to sales prices, figuring out what it’s going to take to win an offer, where I need to look to find possible listings, and what the market might be doing a month or two down the line.”

Hall works mostly in residential real estate. But he doesn’t sell houses, he sells homes.

“To me, a home is so much more than the sticks and bricks that make a house. It’s a place to feel warm and cozy, safe and protected, comfortable and happy.”

Rusty Hall

He said he will never forget the feeling he had after his first sale.

“Relief. After many sleepless nights and a lot of frantic phone calls to my mentor and the lender,” he said. “But in the end, I thought ‘Hey, I think I really might be able to do this!’ I’m in the process of selling a second home for that first client.

“I can see myself selling homes into my 70s and 80s. What am I going to do? Sit around and watch sports on TV?”