Real Estate Avenues: The Brokerage, LLC focuses on residential home sales in Lincoln, NE and strives to be at the forefront of the digital revolution by establishing its position as one of Lincoln’s first “paperless” Real Estate Brokerages, thus making for a quicker, safer, and more efficient transaction for all parties involved. The Brokerage office is located on the top floor of the Haymarket Square Building, overlooking Memorial Stadium and Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln’s Historic Haymarket District. Derek J. Kats is an active Realtor and the owner/founder of Real Estate Avenues: The Brokerage, LLC.
Tell us a little about yourself and your business. – I proudly represent Stephanie Krueger-Ponce of Third Generation Builder, a local new construction residential homebuilder primarily focused in south Lincoln. I also represent some of Lincoln’s top residential investment companies as well as traditional home buyers and sellers. My marketing outreach and consistency is the biggest competitive advantage that I can offer my clients when working for them to sell their home or investment property. With the online and digital revolution, how real estate is sold is less about the traditional word of mouth method or size of network/brokerage; in this modern marketing age it’s more about how many marketing dollars are spent, the consistency of the marketing, and where those marketing pieces are most effectively placed.
How did you get started in real estate? – I began my real estate career in 2003 when I purchased my first investment property, a rental home by UNL campus that I still own to this day. This was while I was also attending the University of Nebraska, where I refined my business and marketing skills and obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.
I continued to develop my passion for real estate investment, and in 2006 I formed Real Estate Avenues, LLC, a local investment company whose primary revenue stream was derived from house flipping along with building equity via buying and holding investment properties. Shortly thereafter, I formed the sister company Real Estate Avenues: General Contracting LLC, a construction company that was put in place to better maximize our investment company’s contractor relationships and create efficiencies in the areas of flip remodeling/rehabbing and investment property management/maintenance.
Investment real estate came easy to me, and with success came the requests from others to help them on that same path. So in January 2010, during the peak of the foreclosure market, I decided to become licensed and start offering those same services to other real estate investors and traditional home buyers/sellers alike. As anticipated, my skill set and overall business-building skills transferred over well causing my client list to grow and business to expand at a rapid rate.
What has been your most important achievement professionally? – With hard work, passion, and strong business acumen, I became ranked as the #1 Buyer’s Agent Realtor by the end of 2011 and was recognized with the honor of receiving the RE/MAX 100% Club Award. I continued ranking as the #1 buyer’s agent in the years to follow, and in early 2014 decided to put my business building skills to work by founding Real Estate Avenues: The Brokerage, LLC.
If our readers would like to contact you, how should they do so? – I can be reached via phone call or text message directly on my cell phone at (402) 770-5021, through our brokerage main line at (402) 466-3748, or via my scheduler/assistant at (402) 805-5589. I can also be contacted via email at DerekJKats@REAtheBrokerage.com. Our Brokerage Office is in the Haymarket Square Building above Vincenzo’s Restaurant at 808 P St Suite 460. You can also find us on Facebook or via our website REAtheBrokerage.com.