Today we’d like to introduce you to Tim McBrayer.
Hi Tim, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Thank you for asking. In 1981, I purchased my first home. I was working at my first job which was in television advertising sales. I wasn’t yet sure it a career in advertising sales was in my future so I decided to go to night school to earn my real estate license because I was intrigued by the whole process of buying and selling real estate. Fast forward to 2007. I had spent the years in between in sales, sales management, consulting and business ownership that eventually brought me to Raleigh in 1992. After so many years in corporate America, I decided that I wanted to have more freedom and the chance to make more money and for me, real estate was very appealing. I had met and become friends with the owner of the largest real estate firm in the Triangle NC area, Don Walston of Coldwell Banker Howard Perry And Walston.
As it turned out the neighbor who lived behind my home and had become a friend as well and just so happened to be the broker in charge of the largest HPW office. Her name was Susan Holbrook. I talked to her about my desire to enter real estate and she encouraged me to pursue that goal. It had been so long since I earned my license back in 1981 that I had to go through all of the classes all over again plus ones you didn’t have to take in 1981 and take the exam again but I passed on my first attempt and in June of 2007, I joined the Midtown Falls office of Coldwell Banker Howard Perry And Walston. I even had the same license number I was given in 1981.
Jim Allen of The Jim Allen Group joined HPW in 2008 and in 2009 when he moved his team to the Midtown Falls office Jim asked me to join his team and I accepted his invitation. At the time, I think there were 12 Realtors on his team and now there are more than 70. He’s the most successful Realtor in the Triangle NC market and has been since 1996. For several years JAG has been the number one team in terms of transactions and gross commissions for all of Coldwell Banker, so I feel very fortunate to be a part of the biggest and I think the best company in the market and also the best and most successful team.
Growing up in a family-owned business back in Georgia taught me a lot about being self-reliant, responsible, hardworking, honest, and loyal and about giving back to others in need. That’s what my parents always taught me to do. Helping people be they buyers, sellers, or strangers that just need some assistance gives me a sense of worth and well-being that is not based on how much I make or how many transactions I do in a year. I’ve always wanted to be successful at whatever I do but having a balanced life is more important to me. Having the support of a great wife of 34 years and two beautiful, intelligent and successful daughters makes work and life a lot easier too.
My family and everyone at my company from Jim Allen to Don Walston understand that it is very important to me to give back to both my industry and my community. I served as a Raleigh Regional Association of Realtors ® Director for seven years, ten years on the Government Affairs Committee, 6+ years on the Realtor ® Foundation of Wake County, and was President in 2018. I was also the Realtor ® Political Action Committee (RPAC) Chair in 2020 and have served on the RPAC committee for 7+ years. At the state level I was an NC Realtors ® Director for three years and have served on many committees from Diversity to Communications. Currently I am in my 2nd of 3 years as a Director of the NC Realtors ® Housing Foundation, 2nd of 3 years as an RPAC Trustee, and a member of the Legislative Committee, I was also a member of the Triangle Realtors ® Leadership Academy class of 2013 and the NC Realtors ® William C. Bass Leadership Academy class of 2019. And in 2018, I was named NC CRS of the Year.
My 14+ years as a Realtor have blessed me with the opportunity to work alongside many talented and generous Realtors who share the desire to give back to our industry and to our local communities. I constantly learn how to be a better person and a better Realtor by watching, listening to and working side by side with the many Realtors who have decided to get involved and give back.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It’s been an interesting road for sure. In May of 1985, I left Charlotte where I had lived for eight years, because I thought I had gone as far as I would be able to in the near future in my profession in that market. I moved to Chicago to work for a different division of Cox Broadcasting. I spent 12 years with Cox between Charlotte and Chicago. I had never lived in a large city: Rome Georgia was a city of about 30,000 when I left after high school and Charlotte was huge compared to Rome or Athens Georgia where I went to college, but it was nothing compared to Chicago. The downside was that the woman I thought I wanted to marry would not move with me. She had a mother who was in bad health and could not be moved so she was unable to leave. While that was a tough time for me personally and the adjustment to living in such a big city by myself was challenging I’m happy to say that by February of 1986, I had met my future wife and by June 1987, we were married. So a little bit of misery turned into great deal of joy.
By 1989 we were living in Roanoke, VA with our first child on the way. I was the sales manager for a local TV station and while I loved a lot about my job, I still wanted to be my own boss like my father had been so in 1992 a business partner and I opened a delivery service called Takeout Taxi in the Raleigh area. It was a franchise and very much like GrubHub and DoorDash but way ahead of its time. Unfortunately, it was before GPS, cell phones, and being able to place orders on the Internet. While we ran it for four years, had 20 thousand customers and delivered for everyone from Jersey Mikes to The Angus Barn, we could never hire enough drivers to be able to make a consistent profit so after a terrible ice storm in 1996 closed us for ten days, we closed the business. We lost a lot of money and it took several years to make that back. I went back into TV sales management and also worked in print and radio advertising but in the end, I decided in 2007 that I just could not work in corporate American any longer: too much bureaucracy and other stuff to deal with to make it worth staying. That’s when I made the decision to start my career in real estate. I’ve been rewarded with 14+ years of financial success as well as personal fulfillment because you get to see firsthand the positive impact you can have on peoples’ lives when you are their Realtor ®. Every setback, every disappointment has led to something better, something more rewarding.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about you and The Jim Allen Group at Coldwell Banker Howard Perry And Walston?
I am a Realtor ®, not just a real estate agent. I abide by the Realtor ® Code of Ethics as I help my buyers and sellers purchase and sell residential real estate in the Triangle, NC area. I also abide by my own code of ethics which is really pretty simple: “I never promise what I can’t deliver and I always deliver what I promise.” What that means to me is that I will always honestly deal with my clients, my associates, agents on the other side of any transaction and I will always work as hard as I can to do the best job for my clients to ensure that they have a successful transaction. I can’t guarantee perfection but I can guarantee that no Realtor ® will outwork me to do what is best for buyer and sellers who choose me to be their Realtor ®..
If I specialize in anything, I think it’s dealing with first-time home buyers and sellers who want all of the marketing that can be reasonably done to reach potential buyers. I have all sorts of designations and certifications but if there is any common description of the work I do on behalf of my clients it would be that I am very responsive and that I go above and beyond what the typical Realtor ® will do. I employ a number of marketing strategies/tools to market my listings. Some Realtors ® do some of them but not many if any does all of them. These include but are not limited to video tours, professional photos, custom property websites, interactive websites with floor plans, email blasts the day the property goes on the market to thousands of Triangle area Realtors ®, feature cards and much more.
My clients also benefit from having the marketing power of The Jim Allen Group and Coldwell Banker Howard Perry And Walston behind them. JAG advertises weekly in three area newspapers, we prepare the most detailed property brochures of any Realtor ® or Realtor ® team and we utilize technology to promote our listings and to track the performance of our marketing so that we can maximize results for our clients. We have a live Realtor ® standing by to answer calls from 9 am till 9 pm, often even later, 365 days a year so that we never miss the opportunity to assist a client or potential client. We also have a listing manager and a closing department, a marketing department and a new homes department – all used to make us more effective and efficient for our clients and for the clients of agents that we interact with outside of The Jim Allen Group and Coldwell Banker HPW.
I am most proud of the fact that my clients truly appreciate the work I and my team and company have done on their behalf and are willing to share their thoughts through online reviews and video testimonials that can be found on my personal website. I have over 85 Five Star reviews on Yelp.com as well as dozens on other websites like Zillow and Realtor.com. If I want your readers to know anything about me and the team and company I work with it’s that we work hard for our clients, we are the market leaders for a reason and no one will out-market us when it comes to helping sellers or work any harder for buyers. Just read the reviews and watch the videos and let my former clients speak on my behalf.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Interesting question. I earned my HAM radio license and became a certified scuba diver over 30 years ago. I love experimenting with new gadgets. I’ve probably purchased 30 gadgets on Indegogo.com over the last five years – most of them to be used for real estate purposes. I was an intern for Georgia Senator Sam Nun in the summer of 1975 and two years after Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record, I had the chance to interview him when I was an associate editor of the University of Georgia’s student newspaper, The Red and Black. I’m also an avid photographer – I love landscapes and architectural photography. I have my own woodworking workshop and will be spending a lot of time there whenever I retire.
Last but not least is that I want to concentrate on three things that I can control whenever I retire: besides the aforementioned woodworking and photography it will be traveling to places all over the world with my wife. However, more than anything, if I ever get the chance, and I have no control over this one, is that I want to be a very attentive and loving grandfather. One can only hope.
We are blessed to have so many great Realtors ® in our market. While I am honored that you have chosen to do this article about me I know that there are so many more Realtors ® in the Triangle area that have a story to tell and I look forward to reading them in the future.
Contact Info:
- Email: Tim@TheTrianglesBroker.com
- Website: www.TheTrianglesBroker.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/timmcbrayer/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheTrianglesBroker/
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/TimMcBrayer
- Yelp: www.yelp.com/biz/tim-mcbrayer-coldwell-banker-raleigh
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCdmLGUtTUNBH9xHBfuUk_1Q/videos
- Other: www.pinterest.com/timmcbrayer/
