Jennifer Spencer has always been a problem solver that thrives on challenges. She’s in the perfect career for someone with her energy and creativity – a career that started with a problem to be solved and has led to an award winning real estate business. Jennifer and her husband were buying investment properties to fix up and hold when her grandparents had an Interstate highway go through their farm. “They were being forced to sell,” she says. “Their basis on the property was almost zero, so I knew their capital gains tax would be significant. I wanted to do a 1031 tax-free exchange for them and roll the sale into an investment property, but I had to get my real estate license to do that.” Once she had her license, other people started asking her to do the same thing for them, and over time it evolved into a full blown residential real estate business.

That business is now half repeats and referrals and half “a cousin of that, people seeing us online through Zillow, Yelp or Real Estate Agent.com,” she says. “They also see our ‘sold’ signs throughout the neighborhood.” Jennifer’s objective for her boutique firm is to provide a signature level of service. “We’re high touch, high care and client focused,” she says. “The point is to achieve results.” On listings, for example, they try to find what is unique about the properties. “Buyers look at hundreds of properties online, but typically they only go see 10,” she says. “The question is, how do we make that list of the top ten? We focus on the emotional appeal of the property.”

Her program includes three annual events: a wine tasting, a family picnic and a pie giveaway at Thanksgiving. Her team calls and invites each client personally. “Potentially, we’re seeing them face to face three times a year,” she says. Clients also receive a monthly newsletter, emails with tips on insurance, gardening or design, and a quarterly holiday e-card. She also gives a referral gift to those who send clients her way. Her efforts were recently acknowledged when she earned first place in two categories—number of houses and volume of sales—from the Triangle Business Journal, covering the Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill areas. After operating out of a virtual office for 19 years, last April she opened a brick-and-mortar office—and business grew 40 percent!

Jennifer gives her community the same level of care as her clients. Her company is the primary sponsor of the annual Mom Prom benefiting children with cancer. She also sponsors the community swim team and neighborhood events, offers an annual document-shredding event and hosts a blood drive. All this and four children at home—three teenagers and a tween. “We have a lot of fun playing and going on adventures,” she says, “because they’re such fun ages now.” They bicycle on the greenways and go hiking and boating. Jennifer and her husband love to host theme parties for their friends, too, such as their recent “Through the Ages” party. They decorated each room as a different decade and guests dressed up and brought food representing each particular decade. (The 20s speakeasy became a bottleneck.)

Whether she’s throwing a party or solving a problem, Jennifer exudes boundless creativity. She plans to apply it to grow her business another 40 percent this year while maintaining her 12-person team. She’ll refine her systems, work smarter, and rise to the challenge—as she always does.

For more information about Jennifer Spencer, CRS, SFR, SPS of Spencer Properties, Raleigh, North Carolina, please visit https://spencerprop.com, call 919.602.7411 or email jennifer@spencerprop.com