The National Association of REALTORS®’ Center for REALTOR® Development (CRD) regularly recognizes deserving members for their significant contributions to clients and communities. Through a series of prestigious awards, CRD honors those who consistently exceed expectations and raise the bar in their work.
Meet this year’s ABR® Hall of Fame inductee (an honor recognizing outstanding service, expertise and an unwavering commitment to representing buyers in the real estate market), the SRES® Outstanding Service Award winner (recognizing real estate professionals who have made a significant impact within the senior community) and the EverGreen Award winners (celebrating agents who demonstrate exceptional dedication to sustainable building design and green practices).
Serving the needs of today’s buyers and sellers
Accredited Buyer’s Representative (ABR®) Charlene Roberge, who founded Lagonda Creek Real Estate, LLC in Springfield, Ohio, has been selected as the 2024 inductee into the prestigious ABR® Hall of Fame.
Located between Dayton and Columbus, Lagonda Creek Real Estate and its agents primarily serve the growing community’s middle-class market.
“The biggest thing is helping our clients find what they’re looking for, helping them find that comfort zone, making sure they’re pre-approved and not spending more than they can afford, and counseling them through the whole process of buying a home,” says Roberge, who has been in the business since 1998.
Citing her ABR® designation and related training as among the most valuable across the dozens of certifications she’s earned, Roberge also teaches aspiring real estate professionals at the college level, focusing on helping them pass the state real estate exam.
But when she hires new agents to join the firm, they’re expected to complete a one-on-one program with Roberge that covers prospecting, contract development, and listing and marketing homes. New agents must also participate in “50 Weeks to Success,” a company-wide initiative.
“This helps them learn the steps they need to accomplish every day. If they follow those steps every day, it will help ensure that they’re successful,” she says. “Consequently, my agents come back to me all the time expressing how confident they feel, and how they’re able to counsel sellers and buyers successfully.”
Two of the most important points Roberge hopes to drive home with agents are the critical importance of building rapport and keeping the lines of communication open.
“When it comes to real estate, you get out of it what you put into it,” she adds. “Success in real estate doesn’t fall into your lap. You actually have to work at it. A good agent makes it look easy, but if you aren’t going to build your skills developing relationships and rapport, you won’t go very far in this business.”
Navigating significant life transitions
This year’s SRES® Outstanding Service Award recipient, Richard Spiering, is the visionary founder of the Compass Flourish San Diego team.
A former EMT and private ambulance company owner at age 19, Spiering was already exposed to—and integrated into—the greater San Diego senior population. He’s equally committed to working with aging buyers and sellers in his real estate career, which is defined by his passion for helping seniors.
Spiering was exposed to communities of aging San Diego residents as a child accompanying his grandparents who led religious services at a local skilled care facility.
“The time I spent with my grandparents and the ambulance experience—along with the many connections I made—opened my eyes to the need to support people in those aging communities,” he says. “When I decided to close the ambulance company, I was already licensed as a REALTOR®, and learning about the SRES® certification inspired me to say, ‘Wow, I can help meet the need for care in the real estate space, too.’”
Utilizing tailored marketing campaigns specifically designed for the senior demographic, his team at Flourish San Diego goes beyond providing real estate services, offering guidance and assistance to seniors navigating significant life transitions.
“A lot of my business comes from referrals from people I’ve maintained relationships with, even once they’ve entered an assisted living or care facility,” says Spiering, who builds trust with members of the community in a variety of ways, including hosting seminars.
“This is an industry where trust is so important, and you have to be patient building that trust,” he says.
Spiering dovetails his personal experience with the digital world, using platforms that may reach the younger members of an aging person’s family in order to connect with “someone who is aware that the time is coming and decisions have to be made about a loved one’s living situation—and who is looking for someone to help them figure it all out.”
Spiering’s most recent achievement was being invited to spearhead a new Compass division that will change the way older adults are approached in the world of real estate.
“We have close to 200 agents across the country who want to get involved,” he says. “This is going to be a place the senior demographic can come to feel really well taken care of. A big goal of this division is supporting agents who want to grow in this area of the business. With the education we’re going to pour into this, we feel that they’ll be empowered to make the biggest impact in this space.”
Advancing the green building industry
North Carolina’s Ashley Rummage and Amy Taylor are this year’s EverGreen Award winners. Individually and collectively showcasing exemplary leadership, Rummage and Taylor are committed to advancing the green building industry within the Raleigh Regional Association of REALTORS® (RRAR).
After bumping into one another at a neighborhood swimming pool, these local moms and real estate professionals identified a need to support their entire regional group of colleagues by sharing the latest and greatest green practices they’d each been utilizing to help benefit their clients and community.
Their journey began with their service on RRAR’s Professional Development Committee in 2023, where they organized a groundbreaking Sustainability Summit for members. As summit chairs, Rummage and Taylor facilitated discussions on various sustainability topics, including the National Association of REALTORS®’ sustainability toolkit, appraiser training, local business partnerships and grants supporting sustainability efforts.
Their success with the summit led to forming the Sustainability Exploration Task Force, where they advocated for establishing a Sustainability Committee, which was formally adopted earlier this year.
At Appalachian State University, Rummage focused on building sustainable practices, which laid the foundation for her commitment to green building. With over a decade in the business, she’s dedicated to guiding clients through the home-buying and -selling process, focusing on empowerment, sustainability and achieving an enhanced quality of life.
“One thing I like about sustainability and the environment part specifically is that a lot of it focuses on the total cost of homeownership,” she says. “When people are looking for houses, they may not necessarily factor in insurance costs, building materials and how they can utilize green practices.”
Rummage says she’s pleased to see a growing number of aging clients becoming as receptive as younger clients to embracing green practices as part of their real estate experience.
As a licensed North Carolina real estate agent, Taylor’s insight into design and renovation is enriched by her professional expertise. A regionally respected home renovation expert, she approaches each project with an eye for the homeowner’s lifestyle and future resale value.
Her commitment to sustainable living and wellness, deeply influenced by her personal journey as a breast cancer survivor, has steered Taylor toward a unique approach to home renovation.
She advocates for sustainable and health-conscious building practices, believing that the synergy between healing living spaces and healing those who occupy them extends beyond renovation to enriching lives and the environment.
“I think people are pleasantly surprised today about all the choices they have to adopt green building practices and technologies into their homes,” she says. “They may cost a bit more upfront, but in the end, they’re seeing savings and a return on their investment. You just have to be patient and good about explaining it all to them.”
Even when potential buyers are only planning to live in a home for a relatively short period of time, Taylor’s construction and project management experience helps her guide clients to integrate or invest in the best green practices available within their budgets.
“We talk about how they can enjoy the benefits of these improvements while they’re living there, and how much of an attraction they’ll be to buyers once they put their home on the market,” she points out.
Both REALTORS® agree that the EnergySTAR program is still one of the most well-recognized and effective ways of helping homeowners pursue a greener way of living.
“It used to be almost completely related to appliances, but today, more people are realizing that EnergySTAR can be applied to an entire home. When a seller has an EnergySTAR home, we obtain all the background information from the builder and highlight that in our marketing,” explains Rummage, who spends a good amount of time looking at governance and policy.
“We do all these things on the sustainable side, but we also have to have policies to continue these home-building practices in the future.”
As collaborators who took their Energy Summit to a permanent Sustainability Committee within RRAR, Rummage—who first connected with Taylor through a sustainably minded REALTORS® social networking site—says it was a logical next step to take after she received her Green designation.
“It was so refreshing and exciting to find another REALTOR® who was passionate about providing a better place for her children and, eventually, we put together a pitch for a Sustainability Summit to our association’s Professional Development Committee, and they fell in love with it,” says Rummage.
“With Amy’s knowledge of building practices, we really complement each other,” she adds. “And now that we have a committee for 2025, we’re busy recruiting members.”
“I think Ashley and I are both very willful, stubborn people who don’t like to take no for an answer when it comes to something we’re passionate about,” says Taylor. “When she and I joined forces, I already had a presence at RRAR, so joining forces and being organized together showed what strength in numbers can accomplish—even when it was just two of us.”
For more information, please visit https://crd.realtor/.
