Editorial
Front Page - Friday, November 5, 2010
Limerick reflects on the journey that brought her here
David Laprad
Carolyn Limerick was raised on horseback north of Detroit, the youngest of three girls and a descendent of the inventors of the Packard automobile. Today, she works as a real estate agent for The James Company, which specializes in the development and marketing of mixed-use communities.
- David Laprad
Carolyn Limerick is standing outside an elegant brick home in Hixson, Tenn., scenic river and mountain views extending in all directions. The house isn’t hers, but one of a small selection of listings she’s managing as a real estate agent for The James Company. As she surveys her surroundings, she thinks back to her childhood, which she spent riding horses across majestic Northern Michigan farm country, admiring the stylish architecture of the homes around the Great Lakes.
“I grew up in a fox hunting family. I’d get up at two in the morning to braid manes and tails, and then head out in the dark, listening to the clip clop of the horses’ feet as I was hacking to the meet in the pitch dark. It would barely be daybreak when we arrived,” she says, adding that the hunts in which she participated were about the chase, not the kill.
Born and raised north of Detroit, Limerick was the youngest of three girls and a descendent of the inventors of the Packard automobile. She says she wasn’t an A student because her thoughts were always with her horses, which she trained and presented at shows. When Limerick didn’t take to her studies at an all-girls university in West Virginia, she moved to Pebble Beach, Calif., where she managed her aunt’s riding farm and attended community college.
In time, Limerick returned to Michigan and worked in a variety of women’s clothing retail stores as she completed her work on an associate’s degree.
“I was unlike my sisters, who went to the same school all four years and graduated with bachelors degrees. I was a horse person. It was a way of life for me,” she says.
Instead of pursuing a higher degree, Limerick decided to further her equine studies. She’d already mastered the American hunt seat style of riding and was eager to learn the French seat, so she asked her trainer whether she should pursue a degree from a riding school or get some experience under her belt. Her trainer said experience would be more beneficial to her, so she moved in with her sister, who was living at the base of Elder Mountain in Marion County, near a classical riding school. Limerick spent nine months at the school, training a half dozen horses a day in jumping, dressage and cross-country events.
“Being a Frenchman, our instructor enjoyed his wine, and he’d yell at us a lot and make us cry,” she says.
Limerick’s future changed her third day at the school, when she met her future husband, Matt, on a blind date. When she finished the riding program, she decided to stay in Tennessee and took a job at a Pruett’s grocery store, where she worked for the next several years. In 1987, she married Matt, built a house on Signal Mountain and took on a new role: housewife. Following a miscarriage, Limerick and her husband had two children, Matt Jr. and Lindsey.
For the next 15 years, Limerick focused her energies on running a household and getting her kids past the obstacles she’d faced in school. Once both children were settled in and doing well at Baylor, she decided she needed something to do, and that it wouldn’t hurt to have a little extra income. So she went to TREES.
“Remember, I hadn’t been an A student, so I knew I’d have to focus. I wanted to do retail and women’s clothing, but I needed to feel like I had a brain. When all you do is cook and clean and take care your family, you don’t feel like you have much up here,” Limerick says, pointing to her head.
“I crunched and crunched and crunched and said, ‘I have no family, no animals, nothing. I have this.’ I put on my blinders and focused. That was how I passed. I’d never done anything that hard,” she says.
If TREES was difficult for Limerick, getting her business up and running was even more so. To get started, she interviewed the various real estate firms around town, eventually settling on The James Company, which specializes in the development and marketing of mixed-use communities.
“I’d worked at The GAP and Saks 5th Avenue, and while the GAP is huge, I’ve always felt like I was a Saks 5th Avenue girl. The James Company seemed to have that for me. It was more elite and refined. The other companies were great, but they were huge. I like having my own office and being able to close my door,” she says.
Limerick admits she had no idea what she was doing in the beginning, and that her broker, James Perry, didn’t think she was going to succeed. He kept pushing her, though, and in time, Limerick learned to not only do her job but also handle the difficult aspects of it.
“A big part of this job is re-jection. But you have to get out there and keep going,” she says.
Limerick says she’s different from other agents she knows in that she prefers to manage a smaller selection of listings rather than a large portfolio. She says this goes back to the doctor she had when she was pregnant with her first baby, which miscarried.
“He treated me like a number. I didn’t like being a number, and I don’t want to treat other people like one. When you have an agent with 30 or 40 listings, he’s not going to be able to give you individual attention, so you’re going to be a number. Maybe I’m going against the grain, but I like to get about ten listings and sell those before I take on more,” she says.
Limerick says she’s also more comfortable with buyers than sellers because it’s easier for her to figure out what someone wants than deal with the disappointment a client feels when his listing doesn’t sell.
“I have a knack for digging and finding what people want. That’s satisfying for me because I’ve done my job and made someone happy,” she says.
Although Limerick still owns two horses, she doesn’t ride as much as she used to because she wants to be available when a client calls. Instead, her enjoyment in life comes from family and work.
With she and her husband approaching their silver anniversary, Matt Jr. in college and Lindsey continuing to do well at Baylor, she has a lot to smile about on the home front. And with the words “Multi-Million Dollar Producer” on her business card,” she can feel good about how far she’s come in her career.
While she misses the days when she’d awaken at 2 a.m. to prepare for a hunt, and her dream of being a professional equestrian has passed, wild horses couldn’t drag her away from where she is today.
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