Real Estate Market Influencer: Hugh Evans III

Hugh Evans III from Partners Trust to Pacific Union International & the Nation’s Fifth-Largest Brokerage by Sales Volume

“We wanted to create a new culture that was more of a team,” says Hugh Evans III.

“We realized that the group together could probably do more business than a bunch of agents competing with each other.”

They invited others aboard who shared this idea and, nearly 10 years and about 250 agents later, Partners Trust merged with Pacific Union International, which is currently the nation’s fifth-largest brokerage by sales volume.

The quickest way to get somebody’s trust is to tell them why they shouldn’t buy something. If I don’t believe in it and I think there’s a problem with it, I’m going to tell them.

Hugh Evans III

But it was many years earlier that Evans’ journey in real estate began, hammer in hand. After attending college in Colorado, the Santa Monica native worked as a general laborer in construction.

“I was doing grunt work,” he says. “I was the guy who runs around doing stuff that nobody else wants to do. It was fun. I really enjoyed that time.”

It wasn’t just after-work beers with the crew that was responsible for this fondness, but the interest in building it inspired, which would become central to Evans’ well-rounded real estate repertoire.

Agent, mortgage broker and developer. Agency founder.

“It gives me a lot of confidence knowing how to talk to clients from the beginning to the end of the transaction,” he explains.

“I can discuss the finance side. I can talk about the construction of the property. I can talk about it from an investment standpoint—I understand the value and emotion they are going through investing a tremendous amount of their own money because I’ve been there myself.”

It’s this acumen, crossed with Hugh Evans III’s approachable, consultative nature that has earned the trust of a stable of, particularly well-heeled clientele.

“The quickest way to get somebody’s trust is to tell them why they shouldn’t buy something,” he advises. “If I don’t believe in it and I think there’s a problem with it, I’m going to tell them.”

Partners Trust merge with Pacific Union was a victory for Evans and his team—“What we set out to do, we did,” he says—and the group is, as entrepreneurs are, busy creating new things. Co-founder Richard Stearns, for instance, recently profiled in this column (August 3, 2018 issue), has started Stearns + Partners, a next-gen real estate team at Pacific Union.

“We wanted to create a new culture that was more of a team”

Hugh Evans III

In addition to selling homes, Evans is also returning to a former and not forgotten love.

“I’m back into building again,” he says, with a happy kick in his placid, warm voice. It’s a pursuit he and his business partner Chris Liebes engaged in for many years, creating standout architectural homes on epic sites in Brentwood and Pacific Palisades.

“We’re taking that model and starting again.” For Evans, the payoff is the process of building something exquisite and unique, then, similar to his work as a real estate agent, connecting it with its rightful owner.

“It’s so satisfying to see someone who gets it,” the agent says of the match-making moment.

“They know it. It takes them five seconds.”

It’s also not uncommon for him to bump into someone whose home he built 20 years ago, and find out that they’ve never moved, so right was the place.

He teases a specific project that he promises “is going to be amazing,” before pulling back: “But we’ll just leave that there.”