About Andy Hofmann · 12 Years Inside the Gates

The Story

My family and I moved to Ocean Reef® twelve years ago, when my kids were in second and sixth grade. They grew up here and drove their golf carts to The Academy on property, my son is now a legacy member, and over the years we have owned homes in three different neighborhoods. This has been our home, not a place I drive into for work.

Before real estate I spent twenty years in corporate sales, the last ten at Merrill Lynch. I have always been a numbers guy. It is the strongest thing I bring to this work: sitting down with the comparable sales and working out what a place is genuinely worth.

Knowing this place well eventually turned into helping other families settle here. Early on I spent a few years as director of sales for the Club's real estate company. Twelve years and more than 150 sales later, the part that still gets me is the economics of it. A well chosen home here tends to be a sound place to have your money, not only a good place to be, and helping someone find one that does both is the part I care about.

A friend from Nantucket started calling me the Hof and told me to put it on everything, so I did. It became "ask the Hof" for a simple reason: after this many years, and this many corners of the Reef, there is very little about the place I cannot answer.

I know the numbers.

My first deal here tells you how I work. The market was nothing like today: 265 properties available, and the average one had been sitting close to two years. A seller was asking $3.9 million and had been asking it for two years straight. We ran the analysis and it said the house was worth about three.

So we offered $2.8 million. The convention then was to come in five or ten percent under asking. We came in more than twenty percent under, because that is what the math supported. We closed just over three.

Then the interesting part. The neighbor who had been sitting at four looked at that sale and repriced to three and a half. The whole street started moving again.

That is the job. Not talking someone into a number, but finding the number the evidence supports and being willing to walk away from it. If I tell you three comparable sales closed at 95, 97, and 10, and I am recommending we open at the highest of the three, you will know exactly why before you say yes.

I would rather walk you through the real math on a property than talk you into anything.

Community first

My family and I have traveled with friends from here to the St. Barnabas orphanage in Guatemala, running basketball camps, digging ditches, and helping raise money for a soccer field and bunk beds. That is the spirit of this place: families who show up for each other, generation after generation. Helping you find your footing in that community is the part of my job that lasts long after closing.

Twelve years in, people ask why I am still here. It is the people. I have more friends here than I have had anywhere else in my life, and so does my wife. Part of that is how the place is built: there are more than thirty clubs inside the community, from a flying club to a rod and gun club to the ladies anglers. I am in the men's golf and tennis associations and the racquet club, and this year I am joining the yacht club. My boat is twenty three feet. They told me that was fine.

That is also why my client relationships do not end at closing. In a community this tight knit, your reputation is the only marketing that matters.

About Andy

I know the numbers.

Community first

By the numbers

Come see it for yourself.