Gary Ashton
The Ashton Real Estate Group of RE/MAX Elite and Nashville.com
Bio
Gary Ashton acquired his real estate license in March 2001 and has had a rapid rise to become the number one realtor for Nashville.com, one of the top 1% of realtors in the Nashville area, the number 3 agent with RE/MAX Elite and has recently been featured in the "Who's Who in Nashville"
England to the States
Born in England, Gary spent most of his time pursuing a musical career, first playing drums with the Leeds Middle Schools Orchestra, then the Yeadon Town Brass band, and then moving more towards the rock and pop bands. This eventually led to playing in a local Leeds rock/pop band called Officer Dibble.
At the time Gary was working at an advertising agency and had clients who were selling cars or homes. This was to come in useful later! As the local success of the band grew, the attention of the music business came to them. The band was signed by Chris De Burghs management and as a result the band subsequently opened for Chris De Burgh and Tears for Fears.
His family owned two bed and breakfast hotels, and after leaving the band, Gary helped with the family business. Eventually the hotels were sold and the family emigrated to Clearwater Beach, Florida, where they operated a motel for 10 years.
When developers began approaching the Ashton’s and other local hotel owners, Gary put together a team to handle the negotiations. This was his introduction to the world of real estate, and although the deal fell through, the decision to sell and move to Nashville was made.
In October 2000, Gary came to Nashville to once again pursue a musical career
From Florida to Tennessee
In 2001, Gary obtained his real estate license and became an agent at Crye-Leike in Hendersonville. It seemed the best of both worlds – part time Realtor, part time musician. However, it soon became clear that music didn’t pay the bills and real estate did!
From Part Time to Full Time
Gary eventually became a buyers’ agent for Steve Shrum, one of the top agents at Crye-Leike and one of the few agents in Hendersonville who actually had a website up and running. Gary’s background in advertising had been useful in developing a website for the hotel, and so he applied this knowledge in an effort to enhance the lead generation from Steve’s web site
Nashville.com
When Gary began applying the principals he had learned from Steve and ideas he generated from working on the web site, he decided it was time to move out on his own. In 2004, he was asked to join a local real estate group, Bob Parks, making him the Number 1 agent for Sumner County. Then within 6 weeks, he was approached by the owners of Nashville.com to become the exclusive agent for the real estate section. It then became obvious that he would need the branding of a nationally known company, and RE/MAX was the only choice for Gary’s concept and business model.
As the number of leads generated through Nashville.com swamped Gary, he took on buyers agents to help with the over flow. During the past 4 years he has continued to refine and enhance the lead generation process creating, on average, 35 inquiries a day.
2007
In 2007 Gary made "Top 3" Realtors in sales and earnings for the RE/MAX Elite group of over 400 Nashville area realtors. He is also the number one agent for the Nashville.com Real Estate Team since 2004.
This was a banner year for Gary and his team, notably the first time Gary was recognised for his sales achievents by being honored by RE/MAX as a member of the "Chairmans Club"
2008
As the country started to see the effects of some questionable loan practises that seemed to has reverberations for credit institutions around the world, the market in Nashville was also taking a hit. Sales were down butGary's team was stilled recognised as being the top tema with RE/MAX Elite in Nashville TN
2009
Agai a trying tme for real estate sales in the US but with every cloud there is a silver lining. The collapse of the real estate market actually created an environment for some amazing deals and the strong positioning of Gary's team online meant that 2008 was still a succesful year for the team.
The downturn in sales also was seen by Gary as a team to regroup and to focus his attention on redesigning the website in conjuction with Morgan Carey of Real Estate Webmaster and his design team. The result s the site you are viewing now!
2010
The release of the new website has been met with numerous coomets of approval but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Since the new site was released the number of registrations has nearly tripled and as a result 2010 looks like it will be a banner year for Gary and TAREG.
2011
This was another great year for The Ashton Real Estate Group and for RE/MAX Elite. The team became the #1 team for RE/MAX in Tennessee and also for the state of Tennessee.
As the real estate community became more aware of the success of the team more of the agents saw the potential for enhancing their careers and as a result the team grew to just over 30 agents.
Also, the team developed more business relationships that have also enabled to the team to grow. With Brand Mortage devoting more resources to service the team and like wise with Tennessee Title for closing the team business the outcome has been beneficial for the agents and all the customers.
Real Estate and the Internet
Gary has taken advantage of the Internet as a way of reaching home buyers who are actively using the Web to find out more information about the Nashville area, and homes and properties that are available through the Middle Tennessee Regional Multiple Listing Service (MTRMLS).
If you have ever had any contact with Gary, you'll probably recognize this image as being very representative of just about every hour of his working day!
Gary Ashton in a familiar pose :)
Photography
In keeping with Gary's interest with real estate, architecture and the visual aspect of the internet this developed in to a photography hobby where Gary has managed to blend the interests in travel and photography. Gary has actually won a couple of photography awards working with the Ujena swim wear company based in California.
To contact Gary just use the instant message service above for real time messaging or use form below and please include your phone number.
