By Maggie FitzRoy, Photos by Maggie FitzRoy
Cherya Cavanaugh was 16 years old when she first got into the real estate business.
She worked as an assistant to her mother, an Ocala-based Re/Max Realtor, throughout high school and during her years at the University of Florida, where she majored in education.
Real estate was a good part-time job, she said, but her goal was to be a high school teacher.
“I swore I’d never be a real estate agent,” she said. She told her mother: “You people are crazy. Your life is chaos.”
Contemplating the irony of that one recent day in her Re/Max Unlimited Nocatee office, Cavanaugh smiled and said, “Never say never, right?”
Cavanaugh did become a Realtor, after teaching biology for 15 years. And a successful one, winning two 2016 Northeast Florida Builders Association Laurel Awards. She received “Top Producer for Individual Real Estate Agent Representing a Buyer,” and was one of two Realtors to receive an award for “$10-$15 million in Sales Representing a Buyer.”
Cavanaugh won the awards as an individual agent, but she has a team of five agents, including her husband, Tom, working with her. By herself, she sold 40 new construction homes in 2016, and 41 re-sales, a total volume of about $25 million.
Many of those sales took place in Nocatee, where the Cavanaughs live. In fact, every member of their team lives in Nocatee.
When the Cavanaughs moved to the community in 2010, it was in the beginning phases of construction as the real estate industry was coming out of the Great Recession. Timing is everything, as they say, and Cavanaugh said that proved true for her real estate career.
The couple had been living in California, where Tom worked as a Pulte Homes executive. In California, master-planned communities like Nocatee were common, and despite the economic downturn, Cavanaugh realized the potential.
“We saw Nocatee as a diamond in the rough,” she said. “Five minutes from the ocean; 20 minutes from Jacksonville, a metropolitan city; and 20 minutes from St. Augustine, an historic and cultural landmark. You don’t get any better than that.”
Cavanaugh had let her Florida teaching certificate lapse while in California, and learned that she would need to take about a year’s worth of college courses to renew it. Since she needed a job right away, Tom suggested she go back to real estate, working as a site agent for the Nocatee Del Webb 55- and-older community.
“It was the beginning of my chaos,” Cavanaugh said. After 18 months, she realized that the buyers, many of whom were moving from out of state, needed an advocate to walk them through the home construction process.
She knew Re/Max was about to open a Nocatee office in the new Publix shopping center, so she signed on. She was one of the first real estate agents located in Nocatee, which was the plan, she said.
“Tom and I developed a team,” Cavanaugh said. “New construction is our expertise. He worked for Pulte for 15 years, so we have a lot of knowledge and expertise between us.”
They also are partner agents with a national real estate company called 55places.com, that targets 55-and-older active adults and passes on a lot of referrals for the Del Webb neighborhood.
While about 80 percent of the Cavanaugh team’s business is in Nocatee, they also list and sell homes throughout Jacksonville and St. Augustine. Often, one side of the transaction will be in Nocatee, and the other half somewhere else.
“If someone lives in Mandarin, we will list their home in Mandarin and then help them purchase in Nocatee, or anywhere else they want to go,” Cavanaugh said.
Her mother still is in the business in Ocala. With the real estate business more complicated than ever, Cavanaugh said when she has a “crazy deal” she’ll call her mother, and she’ll walk her through it.
“There are so many moving parts, that’s why you need a team,” she said. “Today alone, I went from a new presentation with customers from New Jersey to an appraisal, then held an open house, then hit three real estate caravan houses.” Later, her New Jersey customers planned to meet her back at the office, when she would to take them to the beach.
But she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Getting back into real estate was the “best decision I ever made,” she said. “I didn’t realize how rewarding it is, as a real estate agent, to deliver keys to someone purchasing a home. Their whole lives change dramatically. It’s not about the money. It’s about truly having an impact and changing people’s lives.”