Shelley Park Cluff, NextHome Park Place Homes Group

Shelley Park Cluff’s branding session in Midland, Michigan captured her warmth, confidence, and authentic personality. From polished headshots to meaningful detail shots, every image reflects the heart of her real estate brand with NextHome Park Place Homes Group. This session was designed to highlight both professionalism and approachability, creating powerful visual assets for her business.

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I’m with NextHome. We’re a franchise that started in California. It’s 10 years old and similar to like a REMAX.

I have a physiology degree from Michigan State University, clearly I don’t use that. I was working as a head hunter, a recruiter, and determined that it was not a job I was going to retire from because it was a lot. There’s a risk of losing your commission checks if the person you referred leaves the job. So, that’s very scary when you’re single and living on your own in Detroit.

I did an inventory of “I really like these parts of the job.” Recruiting is a lot of you working with a candidate that has five characteristics, and also working with an employer that’s looking for those same five characteristics, so you match that candidate and employer together. Very much like real estate. My mom had been asking me to get into real estate with her for years and years, but I kept declining many times. You want to do it when you’re in a good place, not running from something at the time. So, I finally decided, that “you know what, I’m going to be good at that because I like doing the matching thing.”

Real estate, it’s not that much different, you’re matching a buyer with a house.

I’m the broker owner, so I oversee our team, and we have property management in there. Most of our market is residential, vacant land, hunting land, cottages, second homes, those types of things. We have seven people on our team.

I jumped from the REMAX balloon and opened my own company through NextHome in 2008 when the real estate market was tanking. So, in the worst real estate downturn, I’m opening up a real estate office. And that I always say, tells you a bit about how I operate. Like “oh, watch this.”

Like other entrepreneurs, when they see something, they have a different idea. They want it do be done differently. In my case, it was a different culture; I wanted a different culture, and that’s what I went for. It was a little scary. We were discovered early, before we were ready to open. We didn’t have signs, phones, a printer, nothing. But I did it.

My advice now is always the same. Ask yourself what’s going to bring you joy. Why would you work in a job that doesn’t bring you joy? So, have your ducks in a row. Don’t jump in blindly. Understand what it takes. Have a business plan, there’s so many resources around here like the Small Business Development Group and things that can help you, but know what your plan is and just jump.

COVID brought us to CMURC. We were one of the first tenants. We had an office on Wackerly Road, across from the tennis center that was over 3,000 square feet. When COVID hit, real estate agents were non-essential for six weeks. We couldn’t do anything, so all the realtors from my office created home offices and everything became more cloud based in all of our systems. I could write an offer on my phone if I have to now, so a lot of the world was shifting at that point. When we could go back to work, no one was coming into the office. It didn’t make sense to carry that overhead when people don’t just drive down the road and stop in and say “Oh yeah, I want to buy a house,” it’s more referral based and more of a long-term, thought out buying process.

Our team meets once a week, but most are working remotely. Two of us are in Saginaw, most of us are here in Midland, but we’re on the road all the time. I leave my house to come into the CMURC office and work, or I won’t work. I’m way more productive outside of the house without those distractions. Plus, we’ve gotten to know the senior people in the office and I like to just check in with them and have conversations.

Yes, the interest rates have come down. They are at, the national average is around 6.13. But, that of course changes daily. They are never going to be 3% again. People need to know that it is still in our micro market in the Great Lakes Bay Area, a seller’s market. There’s still more buyers than there is inventory, so it’s a good time to sell if you’re a seller. What I see likely coming over the next year its he market balancing to be more inventory with those rates. People that didn’t want to move for the higher rate will now move, and so homes will start coming on again.

If I’m talking to someone who would want to become a realtor, our NextHome culture sets us apart, how we work. I can either have the person next to me be considered my competition, or I can consider them my team. And, I wanted that team approach, if we all work together, we accomplish a whole lot more. A “humans over houses” approach, take care of the people and the houses will take care of themselves. We’re small enough that we can adapt and change and do things the way that we want to do things, and individualize them. But, we have the corporate backing to give us all the resources to do it, instead of trying to make them without it.

We have a lot of experience in the office. All of our agents have over seven years experience, with the exception of one. So, we also have a lot of mentorship and training time, it’s important to me that we make sure we’re advising and educating.

We need to make sure that we’re putting the person first to get them what they want.

Most first time buyers are walking in saying “I don’t know what I need to know.” That’s where we’re really good at directing to figure out those needs. We’ll ask things like “What’s on your wishlist? What do you need?” Because sometimes those things are a little bit different. And then we go through the steps. We don’t do the financing, but we do have lenders that we’re comfortable with in the area. We know a lot of banks too.

I don’t want to be like other entrepreneurs and say it’s a love, hate relationship. But, it’s a love hate relationship. There’s moments where you’re saying “I can’t believe this. Why am I doing this?” Because you do have some of the ups and downs, but I also at the same time ask myself “am I willing to trade that to go back and have someone else be my boss?” Oh, heck no.

– Shelley Park Cluff, NextHome Park Place Homes Group

Arielle Roth Photography

Arielle Roth Photography

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