Chris Schlitz
REALTOR®, Owner/Managing Partner
JP & Associates REALTORS® Metro Atlanta and JP & Associates REALTORS® South Florida Living
Atlanta, Georgia and West Palm Beach, Florida
www.jparmetroatlanta.com and www.southfloridarealtyexperts.com
Region served: Greater Atlanta and West Palm Beach, Florida
Years in real estate: 30
Number of offices: 3
Number of agents: 106
Best time management tip: Prioritize everything you do. I learned early on about the “sunshine” rule, which is to never let a call or email go unanswered before the sun sets.
Can’t-live-without tech tool: Our kvCORE CRM. Not only does it provide our agents with everything they need to generate and maintain good leads, but we also now employ the guy who started the company!
Ideal agent recruit profile: Since our core values center around productivity and service, we look for agents who are productive—and those who will succeed in meeting our productivity standard.
I imagine it’s an exciting time for you as you recently opened a new office. Our new Suwanee office is in the heart of the town village district, surrounded by shops, restaurants and the City Hall—with things happening 24 hours a day. We believed there was a need for a real estate office in Suwanee, and we think it’s one of the best locations in the whole county. By contract, we’re the only real estate office in the village center, and since opening our doors earlier this year, we’re already seeing tremendous success with buyers and sellers just walking in.
You and your wife are both certified new-home specialists. How do you maximize the talents you both bring to the table for new homebuyers? My wife, Lisa, works directly with our builders, and I handle the marketing. At the moment, we’re seeing more new-home sales than resales—and builders can’t seem to keep up with the demand. We’re helping our clients get better deals because we know how to negotiate when it comes to listing and buying new properties.
What have you learned throughout the course of the pandemic that has helped your company weather the challenges? Because of COVID, we looked at opening our new office in Suwanee due to the fact that people were leaving the cities for the suburbs and looking for properties that provided them with the space for a home office. I would have to say that COVID didn’t faze us one bit. In fact, 2020 was our most profitable year, and we’re already seeing that continue in 2021.
Looking ahead, where do you and Lisa go from here? We’re opening two more offices in the Atlanta market in the next 18 months, in addition to two more offices in South Florida. One is in Port St. Lucie, a new-construction heaven, where there’s a ton of opportunity for new transactions. Once the new offices are open, our goal is to have 1,200 agents in Georgia and 800 to 1,000 in Florida.
For more information, please visit www.jpar.com.
John Voket is a contributing editor to RISMedia.
