I sell a lot of homes at the beach.
Some of them are pretty spectacular.
But if you asked me what kind of property I can disappear into for half a day without realizing how much time has passed, there's a good chance it doesn't have a house on it at all.
Give me a big piece of land, an aerial map, a pair of boots and a reason to figure out what makes the property interesting, and I'm pretty happy.
Looking back, that probably started a long time before I ever thought about becoming a real estate agent.
Before Real Estate, There Was Dirt
I grew up in New Jersey, and some of my earliest jobs were outside.
In high school, I worked on the greens crews at two golf courses in Warren County: Harkers Hollow and Apple Mountain.
If you've never worked on a golf course, you learn pretty quickly that maintaining one involves a lot more than cutting grass.
You start paying attention to things most people never think about.
Drainage.
Soil.
Grade.
Water.
Trees.
Sun exposure.
How one section of land behaves completely differently from another section only a few hundred feet away.
You also learn that land is never really flat, even when it looks flat.
There is always something happening.
Water wants to go somewhere.
Certain grasses grow better in certain places.
Trees affect what happens around them.
A small change in elevation can make a big difference.
I certainly wasn't thinking about any of that as preparation for a career in real estate.
I was just working.
But some of those observations stuck.
Then There Were Christmas Trees
One of my favorite jobs during college was selling Christmas trees.
I genuinely loved it.
There was something about being outside in the cold, surrounded by trees, helping families pick one out and seeing people genuinely excited to bring it home.
It was seasonal, simple and physical.
And it was fun.
To this day, I'm probably happier splitting wood or dropping a tree exactly where I intended it to fall than I should admit in a real estate biography.
I've hunted for most of my life, too, and spent plenty of time around farms and rural properties.
When you spend enough time outside, you naturally start reading land differently.
You notice transitions between field and woods.
High ground and low ground.
Old logging roads.
Drainage.
Tree species.
Habitat.
Access.
Where deer are moving.
Where water sits after rain.
Where somebody could build.
Where somebody probably shouldn't.
You begin looking at a property less like a polygon on a map and more like a system.
Real Estate Eventually Caught Up With It
When I got into real estate, I didn't initially set out to become a land specialist. But in a few short weeks of competing with every seasoned and new agent selling homes, I saw an opportunity.
We have over 3500 agents in our "region" which make up a few Realtor associations.
99% specialized in selling homes. What about land!?
So I attacked the wedge that made most sense.
Land also required a completely different approach than selling a house.
With a house, much of the value is visible.
You can walk through it.
You can see the kitchen. You can count the bedrooms. You can evaluate the finishes.
Land is different.
Sometimes what matters most is invisible.
Two 50-acre properties can look almost identical in an MLS search and be completely different investments.
One might have excellent road frontage and good soils.
Another could have access constraints.
One might have development potential.
Another could be heavily affected by wetlands.
One might have valuable agricultural ground.
Another might be mostly wooded recreational land.
One may contain a creek, pond or valuable habitat.
Another may have drainage problems.
Then there are zoning rules, floodplain, Critical Area restrictions, utilities, easements, subdivision possibilities, timber, topography and whatever is hiding on a recorded plat somebody filed decades ago.
That's why acreage alone doesn't tell you much.
The interesting question is:
What can this land actually do?
That's the part I enjoy figuring out.
One thing I've never understood about selling large properties is trying to understand them entirely from a computer.
Technology is incredibly useful.
I use aerial imagery, mapping systems, public GIS data, drone photography and increasingly sophisticated property intelligence tools.
But eventually, you have to go see it.
I've used UTVs to tour properties with clients because walking several hundred acres isn't always practical.
I'll fly a drone to understand something that's difficult to see from the ground.
I'll look at neighboring land.
I'll look at access points.
I'll pay attention to vegetation and drainage.
Sometimes I'll walk into an area because something on the aerial doesn't quite make sense.
That doesn't make me a surveyor, engineer, forester or environmental consultant.
There are professionals whose expertise matters enormously when those questions become serious.
But as the real estate agent, I think I should understand enough about the property to know which questions need to be asked.
The buyer pool for land is different, too.
A beautiful house has an obvious purpose.
Land can have ten.
The buyer might be a farmer.
A neighboring landowner.
A developer.
A builder.
A conservation buyer.
A hunter.
A timber investor.
Someone looking for a family compound.
Someone assembling acreage.
Or someone who simply wants to own a place where they can disappear for the weekend.
Over the years, I've developed relationships with land investors, acquisition professionals, farmers, developers, builders and buyers throughout Delmarva.
That network matters because sometimes the best buyer for a property isn't actively scrolling Zillow looking for it.
They may not even know they want the property until somebody puts it in front of them.
I even went as far as getting my Virginia license, and seriously explored partnering with a large Virginia/NC land brokerage to expand their existing footprint on the Eastern Shore.
While I ultimately passed on the opportunity to have significant ownership in a brokerage, I made the right call.
When I moved into real estate on the Delmarva Peninsula, I ended up in one of the most interesting places possible for someone who likes land.
Within a relatively short drive, you can move from beachfront property to tidal marsh, irrigated farmland, poultry country, timber, hunting ground, waterfront estates and development land.
The geography changes constantly.
So does the way the land is used.
I've now had the opportunity to sell thousands of acres across the peninsula.
Some of those transactions have been straightforward.
Others absolutely have not.
And the complicated ones are usually the most interesting.
The Technology Came Later
Years of working with those properties eventually helped lead me toward building Ruchha.
That happened because I kept running into the same problem:
There was an enormous amount of information available about a parcel, but understanding it required jumping between too many systems and knowing what to look for.
Flood data in one place.
Wetlands somewhere else.
Soils somewhere else.
Zoning somewhere else.
Topography somewhere else.
Recorded plats buried somewhere entirely different.
I started wondering whether there was a better way to pull those pieces together and actually explain what they meant.
In a strange way, Ruchha traces back to the same curiosity that made me pay attention to where water moved across a golf course years ago.
It's just a lot more technical now.
There is something satisfying about selling a great house.
You get to tell the story of what somebody built.
Land gives you a different kind of story.
You're often selling what somebody could build.
Or grow.
Or preserve.
Or hunt.
Or develop.
Or leave exactly the way it is.
You have to understand enough about the property to help somebody see that possibility.
Maybe that's why I've always liked it.
Before real estate, I worked golf courses.
I sold Christmas trees.
I worked around farms.
I hunted.
I cut wood.
I spent a lot of time outside without thinking much about whether any of it would eventually become useful professionally.
Then I started selling real estate and discovered that some of the properties I understood best were the ones where the land itself was the story.
Turns out, I had been learning how to look at them for a long time.