by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
Today’s headlines scream about two major things: rising gas prices and a falling housing market. While it’s true the real estate market is slow across the nation, there are still houses to sell and money to be made.
Locally, no one does it better than Elizabeth Hudgins, the top producer for Prudential Network Realty, and the top realtor in Northeast Florida.
Hudgins said the secret to her success is to deal with whatever comes up when it comes up.
“I am available on my cell phone from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and I always pick it up and I always answer it,” said Hudgins. “Customers in general do not like to be put on hold or leave a voice-mail.
“That’s one of the things that people have told me — I am one of the most accessible agents they’ve dealt with.”
With 17 years in real estate, Hudgins was once again last year’s top producer for Prudential and she shows no signs of slowing down.
She started her career with Watson Realty and joined Prudential Network Realty four years later and has been the top producer consistently for the past 13 years.
Hudgins said she decided to switch to Prudential because the company is national and international and she wanted a bigger network.
The president of Prudential Network Realty is happy she did.
“Elizabeth is the consummate professional,” said Linda Sherrer, president of Prudential Network Realty. “She is market-savvy, smart, focused, and loves the art of the deal. She is inspired by excellence and a desire to help her clients achieve their goals. These are sincere and powerful dual motivators.”
Sherrer said Hudgins has a talent for making her clients feel singularly important.
“They trust her because of her knowledge, experience and even-keeled personality,” said Sherrer. “She also has a reputation for excellence among her colleagues at Prudential Network Realty and is extremely generous in sharing ideas and procedures.”
Sherrer said Hudgins closed $55.5 million in 2006 and over $30 million in 2007.
“She definitely knows how to streamline the real estate process while providing extremely full service,” said Sherrer. “We have many truly outstanding sales professionals at Prudential Network Realty. Elizabeth is our star, but a modest one, too committed to her customers to view herself as the role model she has become.”
Real estate is Hudgins’ first professional career and it seems she was a natural at it from the start.
“I never even worked (professionally) until I went into real estate,” said Hudgins. “I was a stay-at-home mom and went into real estate because we moved from Ortega to the beach. The kids were gone and I was bored.
“It was when the beach was really starting to boom and we started buying and selling some properties on the ocean and other places. My husband (the late Dr. Robert Hudgins) said I should get my license so we would know what we were doing and discount some of the brokerage, so I did.”
Hudgins’ connections from Ortega to the beach gave her an immediate circle of influence.
“I was at a point in my life where I knew people all over town and had been on a tennis team and such, so that when I sent out my letter saying ‘I’m now in real estate’ my business just took off right away,” she said.
Hudgins said she didn’t get her license to start a career, but that’s obviously not how it ended up.
“I didn’t plan for it to be a career. I just did it on a lark and then after about four or five years, especially after I came to Prudential, my husband and I both had to start taking me seriously. The first year it was a lark and I said, ‘Oh, isn’t this fun.’ I just spent what I made and my poor husband picked up the taxes.
“After four or five years, he said ‘No more, we are incorporating, so we will withhold your taxes.’”
After Hudgins came to Prudential and really started to produce, she incorporated and became a P.A. She does business as E.A. Hudgins, Inc.
“I think it is good, tax-wise,” she said. “I incorporated and now take a salary. It’s a good insurance policy that you will have what you need at the end of the year to pay your taxes and it’s a good way to keep track.
“It’s a separate account and all my deductible expenses are in there and it makes filing at the end of the year so much easier.
“It just works well.”
Hudgins is admittedly computer-challenged but said she is a whiz at the Multiple Listing Service (MLS).
“I can do anything in MLS but I have a wonderful full-time assistant, Chris Doyle, who is my right hand,” said Hudgins. “She can show anything I can show and my clients love her to death. It gives us 24 hours a day and seven days a week accessibility. If I’m not available, she is and vice versa.”
Michelle Childs is another of Hudgins’ assistants and handles her advertising, marketing reports and sets up everything from the contract to closing.
“We are a good team,” said Hudgins. “Since I am computer challenged, I am the one out of the office doing the talking to clients and potential clients.”
How does one continue to be a top producer for 13 years?
“At this point, my business is referral,” she said. “I have been here and I know people. My referral basis is large and if you give good service, it just grows. I have a lot of repeat customers. I really don’t have a plan every year. I don’t have a goal every year. I just do what I do and it seems to work.”
She also sends out marketing reports to her customers that include a copy of every magazine in which their home appeared, every showing and the feedback from every showing.
Though she is very busy, Hudgins has learned how to balance her work life and home life equally.
“I think part of it is being accessible during the day and taking care of your business during the day so when I go home at 5:30 or 6 p.m., I can relax, unless there is a contract negotiation or something,” she said. “If you have taken care of your business in a timely fashion before you leave the office, you don’t usually get stuck having to deal with it once you leave the office. I still leave my phone on just in case.”
It also helps to share the responsibility with her assistants.
“Between the three of us we can kind of keep things going,” she said. “I blank out the family and social time on the calendar and it works.”
Hudgins works all over town. The majority of her listings are in St. Johns County — however, she lived in the Ortega area for 20 years.