Over her remarkable 40-year career, real estate entrepreneur Marsha Rand went from being a one-woman band to the chief of an empire with 25 offices and more than 800 agents spanning the Hudson Valley and beyond — not to mention $1.5 billion in annual real estate sales. The icing, says Rand, is that her sons work with her.
This probably wouldn’t have happened had she pursued her first profession, nursing. “That’s the beauty of real estate,” says Rand. “At different stages in your life you can make a fit. As the kids got older I got more involved.” She began in the mid-1970s working in a franchise, learned the ropes, and opened a tiny brokerage office in 1984 in New City, which still serves as the flagship.
Nursing and real estate have more in common than you think, points out Rand. “They’re service industries. You don’t go into real estate because you love houses. You go into real estate because you love people.” A good realtor holds people’s hands, plays amateur psychiatrist, and helps them make big financial decisions. “You’re touching people at a very needy time,” she says.
Today, her sons mostly run the show, though Rand serves as the regional director of Westchester with a focus on agent training. And though her financial success would enable her to live anywhere, she recently moved to a riverside home in Piermont that she spotted in a listing. “I feel like I’m living on a houseboat,” she says. “There’s nothing more beautiful.”
