A really special agent
Austin Business Journal - by Barbara Wray Special To The Austin Business Journal
We should all experience life at age 66 the way Althea Osborn does. Energetic, focused, surrounded by family and friends ... and financially successful.
Althea Osborn, the highest producing agent at Keller Williams Realty for 26 of the last 30 years, reported gross closings sales of $26,064,260 in 2000, placing her fourth on the Austin Business Journal's list of the Residential Real Estate Top 50 Producers.
Top agent at Keller Williams since 1986, Osborn closed 74 residential transactions last year, the top sale for $918,000. While she certainly didn't start at this level of production, she wasted no time in staking her claim in the industry some 17 years ago.
After 25 years as an at-home mom, Osborn wanted to offset the cost of her sons' preparatory school tuition. Her goal was a $20,000 income. Not stopping there, she earned $57,000 that first year, with hefty increases in subsequent years.
"I didn't know I had it in me -- I'm glad I found out that I did," Osborn says.
It really shouldn't have been any surprise that she would find success in a business so closely tied to earning people's trust and confidence and requiring careful attention to detail.
In the early 1950s, Osborn served in the British Secret Service in London, and then in Frankfurt, [then] West Germany. She was not an agent, but her position required she be skilled at encoding and decoding messages, and handling economic intelligence collected from behind the Iron Curtain.
Osborn met her future husband, then Lieutenant Robert Osborn, in Frankfurt in 1958. She left the British Secret Service to become the wife of a U.S. military diplomat. "I became a `risk' when I married," she says.
The skills she polished while organizing dinner parties and balls, and accompanying diplomats and senior soldiers about London, serve her well today. Military life, and the attendant 22 moves in 23 years, allows her to establish instant rapport with executives and their families who relocate to Austin.
Osborn says one of the most rewarding things she does is throw three or four client parties annually. The parties have become networking events that are particularly valued by those in the high tech industry, new to town.
"My clients become my friends," Osborn says. At one recent gala, someone asked for a show of hands from those who had not bought or sold at least one home with Althea's help. A mere five guests raised their hands.
Osborn is short on wasting time and long on appreciating those who contribute to her success -- often with a sense of humor. At one party she provided guests with personalized stick-on notes, and asked guests to label the items in her new home that the guests believed they "paid for." Notes decorated everything from a toilet handle to the walls.
Jim Clardy, partner with Austin Ventures, bought his home through Osborn in 1984, when Crystal Semiconductor, which later merged with Cirrus Logic Inc., consisted of Clardy and a group of just seven or so others. Clardy says Osborn has handled company relocations for "more people than I can remember."
"She's the best one in town," Clardy says. "She keeps up with what's available, she's knowledgeable and she doesn't waste time. She determines what people are really interested in."
Clardy says that he knows of many individuals who used Osborn when they moved to Austin, and call her again when they upgrade.
"She makes sure people get a good deal, in neighborhoods that appreciate, and she knows that she can make them money when they sell," he says.
"They never leave me. My relationships are built on trust," Osborn says.
That same tenet applies to her dealings with other real estate professionals.
Osborn received the Most Referred Realtor Award 1998-2000, a peer-nominated designation, limited to three realtors per city in the United States.
"It's more important to be fair to a fellow agent than to get every dollar," Osborn says.
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