Santiago Arana is the Managing Partner of The Agency in Beverly Hills
HOLLYWOOD’S AGENT
Been featured on The Hollywood Reporter’s 2018 list of L.A.’s Top 30 Real Estate Agents for the last seven consecutive years.
TOP 10
Currently ranked no. 6 on REAL Trends “The Thousand 2018” with more than $420MM in sales volume for the year.
DEVELOPER, TOO
Arana developed a $23 million Brentwood mansion, which he sold last year to LeBron James.
One thing that nearly all successful people share is a respect for rituals. A discipline in following a seemingly small, daily order of things that enables them to function in full bloom, each day.
Take Santiago Arana. He is principal and partner, along with Billy Rose and Mauricio Umansky, at Beverly Hills-based powerhouse firm The Agency. Still in his 30s, he’s already amassed over $2 billion in career sales.
All of this is even more striking when one realizes that it wasn’t too many years ago that he was working in a restaurant in Santa Barbara, first as a busboy, then, as his English improved, a server, after coming to the U.S. from Bolivia in 2003 at age 23 to learn English before embarking on an MBA program. (He already had a business and marketing university degree.)
School would have to wait for the son of a chemical engineer and politician father, and a kindergarten teacher mother, both of whom ingrained Santiago Arana with a work ethic of steel and a can-do attitude where nothing was off-limits. Both traits account for his explosive success in real estate after landing in Los Angeles, another new agent among many.
“It’s about making a decision. It’s about knowing what you want,” says Arana, recounting his steps to success, all forged in self-determinism. Have goals and the certainty that you can achieve them, he shares. That and an unfailing work ethic.
“I believe we are all owners of our own destiny, and we can create our life. But we need to take charge as human beings of our own life because no one else is going to do it for us.”
Santiago Arana
Santiago Arana balances hard work and a winning mindset with self-care. Enter those indispensable rituals. “I work really hard, but at the same time I make time for myself,” he says.
“If you are not working within, people will perceive that you’re not in alignment with yourself.”
This means looking after one’s physical, emotional, and spiritual health—something Arana emphasizes.
“When I present myself to clients, they feel that energy and I think they are attracted to that.”
In real estate, where relationships are everything, showing up with a good vibe is essential. For Santiago Arana, this means days start early at his Pacific Palisades home.
“I wake up at five o’clock in the morning and I meditate for half an hour.”
This is followed by the gym (he has black belts in kickboxing and tae kwon do), and breakfast with his family. These things are non-negotiable and here’s why: “If I don’t do this every day,” he states, “I cannot be one-hundred percent Santiago.”
A hundred percent is important when the stakes are this high. Santiago Arana has achieved a rocket-ship like success; he needs fuel to keep moving forward. This includes actively growing his development business, finishing his first book and mentoring others. (Prior to speaking to DIGS, Santiago Arana had just wrapped up a motivational seminar for agents at his firm.)
Continuing to grow The Agency is another goal. Particularly appealing to Arana is stoking its increasingly international footprint. (The Agency recently opened an office in British Columbia, joining locations in Mexico and Turks and Caicos.) And, of course, continuing to sell luxury homes, principally in Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Santa Monica, and Malibu, where Arana has the bulk of his listings.
In what must have been a satisfying twist to his earlier, less prosperous days in Santa Barbara, however, Arana has listed two record-setting estates in the area: one in Santa Barbara, currently on the market, and another, (sold earlier this year) in nearby Montecito, for $40 million and $35 million, respectively.
Those early days, however, when Santiago Arana was busing or waiting tables and dreaming big, are never lost on him: “Every day I think about them,” he says.
“Every day I am grateful that I had to do that, and every day I’m grateful that I don’t have to do it anymore.
“I wake up every day and look at where I am,” he adds. “I see my house and my wife—who is my rock and biggest supporter—and my kids, and I feel like it’s a dream. I created it, and I’m living it.”
Santiago Arana
Managing Partner, the Agency
424.231.2399 | TheAgencyRE.com
Photos: Courtesy of Santiago Arana