Selling
$3 million homes is becoming old hat for Arvida Realtor
Peggy Brin. She just sold one in Pinecrest for $3.5
million-the largest residential sale in the village
limits to date-and in December marketed another in
Coconut Grove for $3.2 million.
“I’m very comfortable with the luxury
home market and I enjoy dealing with sophisticated
businessmen and women and professionals,” says
Brin. “I get very involved with my clients and
that’s why I feel that I don’t have the
time to have a lot of clients. I work a lot on referral
and I like to pick and choose.”
Born in New York City, Brin, 51, moved to Cleveland,
OH at an early age and grew up there. She attended
Washington University in St. Louis and majored in
psychology, then came to Miami in 1970 with her husband
who studied for his master’s at the University
of Miami. He later became managing partner of the
Miami office of the international accounting firm
of Price-Waterhouse-Cooper.
Brin taught psychology to high school seniors for
five years and was a partner in a successful Coral
Gables interior design firm before deciding to enter
the real estate business on a full-time basis in 1993.
She was rookie of the year following her first year
with Arvida, most improved the next year, a member
of the President’s Club in her fourth year and
the top-level Chairman’s Club in her fifth year,
giving her national recognition as one of the top
producers in the Pinecrest Arvida office. In fact,
the average price of any home she sells is $700,000.
“I’m very focused about what I do and
if I can’t do something well, I don’t
want to do it at all,” she says. “I really
expect much more from myself than other people expect
of me. I prefer to have a boutique-style business-a
limited number of clients, selling quality homes.
I don’t want to be the biggest at what I do;
I just want to be the best.”
Brin, her husband of 30 years, Bob, and their two
sons, Lawrence, 23, and Michael, 20, moved to Pinecrest
in the mid-1980s. With both sons now attending college,
two years ago the Brins relocated to Deering Bay,
a gated community on a golf course in Coral Gables.
“I’ve sold quite a few Deering Bay units
to Pinecrest ‘empty nesters’ because it’s
right around the corner from their old neighborhood,”
she says. “I try to get sellers to stage their
homes when selling them, because when a potential
buyer comes to a home, the first 30 seconds makes
a lasting impression. I really feel that preparing
a house for sale is extraordinarily important. There’s
a whole psychology involved, even to staging and showing
a house, and buying a house is about feeling, not
necessarily about bedrooms and bathrooms.”
Brin says her interests are in decorating and art
collecting and she has a passion for sculpture, which
meshes nicely with her professional life.
“People who are moving have some sort of problem
or issue,” she explains. “Good or bad,
it might be getting married and extending a family,
there might be a transfer and they may be moving into
a better job, maybe moving to worse circumstances,
so I really try to understand what people are trying
to accomplish with their move.”
Brin says she is a full-service Realtor and that
she enjoys helping her clients with schools, camps,
housekeepers, tutors, trades people, even jobs.
“I’m sincere and I think it shows through,”
she says. “I take time with my clients and I
believe in helping them.”
