Santiago Arana of The Agency is has been on The Hollywood Reporter’s 2018 list of LA’s Top 30 Real Estate Agents for the last seven years. From busboy to a nationally ranked real estate agent, the managing partner of The Agency exemplifies an unrelenting will to succeed.
It’s one thing to reach the top of your field, quite another to stay there for years. For Gayle Probst, whose name is a familiar one in the world of Palos Verdes Peninsula real estate, the formula has to do with the love of her job and a Midwestern work ethic that never quits.
This year celebrates 20 years of rather stunning success with Meridith Baer Home, a company she spun from her imagination and two hands. In the late 1990s, Baer, then an actress and scriptwriter, was in between rental homes.
In 2009, Hugh Evans III teamed up with four partners to form Partners Trust. The group—Evans, Richard Stearns, Nick Segal, F. Ron Smith and David Findley—was looking to create an alternative to the existing agency model, where agents worked independently under a company banner.
Katie Hodges became an interior designer by chance. “While I was in college pursuing a career in the medical field (to appease my parents), I worked as a personal assistant to an incredible woman building her dream home,” she recalls.
Anthony Marguleas is founder of Amalfi Estates, the independent agency in Pacific Palisades he opened in 1995. Every time a home is sold—which is often—10% of the commission is given to charity.