Cindy Nixon: The number one thing to make somebody feel part of a community is relationships. Life does not happen in a vacuum, it’s the people that make up the community that make you feel part of the community. When we are working with clients moving into a new area, they may not know anything about that area. And when we are placing them with a real estate agent, this may be their first friend, and we want to make that connection to give them somebody that knows what makes that particular community tick, and getting them actively involved as soon as possible.

 

Amanda Ellis: That’s the voice of Cindy Nixon. She directs corporate relocation efforts at eXp Realty, a fast-growing global real estate brokerage. Cindy’s team has helped a lot of people move, and today, she’s sharing her expert tips on how you can help newcomers get settled in your city, and build their sense of community so they can cozy up in their new location.

 

I’m Amanda Ellis, and you’re listening to Inside America’s Best Cities, a podcast for chamber, economic development and talent attraction professionals on how your community can be a better place to live, work and play. To learn more about this podcast, visit livabilitymedia.com. And with that, let’s jump in.

 

Well, Cindy, thanks so much for being here on Inside America’s Best Cities. To kick off our interview today, for some of our listeners who might not be familiar, what is eXp Realty?

 

Cindy Nixon: So eXp Realty is the fastest growing global brokerage in the world right now. We just surpassed 85,000 agents worldwide.

 

Amanda Ellis: Wow.

 

Cindy Nixon: We cover all of the United States and Canada, from north to south, east to west, and we are also in 21 other countries. So pretty much anywhere you want to buy and sell real estate, we have agents that can hopefully help you out.

 

Amanda Ellis: Covering the globe, that’s awesome.

 

Cindy Nixon: Covering the globe. Yes, ma’am.

 

Amanda Ellis: So you, Cindy, are a relocation director at eXp Realty. What does that mean exactly?

 

Cindy Nixon: So I manage all of our corporate relocation accounts and helping transferees that are moving from point A to point B. My team will assign our relocation certified agents to assist them with their transfer with their corporate employer.

 

Amanda Ellis: Very cool. So as you know, Cindy, our listeners on this podcast are people who work for chambers of commerce, economic development organizations, people who are focused on talent attraction, bringing high-quality talent and new folks into their communities, and also, of course, the aspect of retaining people who are already there. Thinking about your realtors in local markets, I imagine they’re often a first point of contact for people who are new to the area. What information can they typically provide as an advocate for cities?

 

Cindy Nixon: So we partner a lot with the local chambers, getting information on the communities and the markets that they are knowledgeable in. Being the first point of contact, a lot of our clients will start researching a city or a particular area before they agree to take on a new job in that location. We do area tours, candidate tours, all across the United States and Canada for our corporate clients that are wanting us to be ambassadors for the city. We can’t really pull that off without the partnership that we have with the local chamber of commerce and the local communities. They want to be the expert, they want to sell the city, they want to give our clients as much information as possible, so that when and if they are asked to move to that particular area, they can make a solid decision with the knowledge that they have gotten, and if this is going to be the right fit for their family. So we partner a lot with our local, like I said, chambers, and just different businesses, to make sure that we are presenting and giving the most information that we possibly can so that they do make that educated decision.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah. What do those tours usually look like?

 

Cindy Nixon: So on a candidate tour, they’re normally an afternoon or a morning, intermixed with clients that are coming in for job interviews. Our agents will, if the client knows a specific area that they really want to concentrate in. But most of the time these clients know nothing about this city. And the corporate client is allowing them a few hours of time to go out with our agents, who are local experts, to just basically give them an overview, be an ambassador to that city or that market area, show them different community, areas, schools, churches, hospitals, community involvement. Sometimes it will be getting into do some tours with a local school district, if they have school-age children that might be transferring with them. It might get to see a couple of houses that are currently on the market, just so they get a general feel of what the market is, what the price per square footage is and things like that.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah. In your experience, what helps make people feel settled in and feel part of the community once they’re there?

 

Cindy Nixon: Well, I think that community involvement is one. We always want to see, what is their family dynamic? What are they leaving, and what are they looking for in the new location? I also pose a couple of these questions to our top agents and I have a quote from the Beasley team, which is a domestic team in Birmingham, Alabama, is just a very quaint Southern community where we’ve seen quite a bit of corporate people moving into and out of.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah.

 

Cindy Nixon: And Chad and Jen Beasley are one of our top agents in the company. They cover that area very well for us. And when I posed this question to them, they stated, “The number one thing to make somebody feel part of a community is relationships. Life does not happen in a vacuum, people need people.” And that really resonated with me. I really thought that truly is community, it’s the people that make up the community that make you feel part of the community. That’s the one thing. When we are working with clients moving into a new area, they may not know anything about that area. And when we are placing them with a real estate agent that knows the area, this may be their first friend. And we want to make that connection to give them somebody that knows the area, knows what makes that particular community tick, and getting them actively involved as soon as possible.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah. That’s great to hear because I do think that’s something, on the community talent attraction side, that groups are tapping into more than ever. We’ve seen some city concierge type programs that are really neat where you can connect with someone already in the community, maybe before you’re even there already, while you’re debating moving there.

 

Cindy Nixon: Absolutely.

 

Amanda Ellis: And have someone who’s in a similar life situation as you, who you can ask questions and feel like you’re really getting that perspective that isn’t just from, as great as chambers are. Of course, they’re going to tell you it’s great. But being able to hear from someone who’s actually there. And we at Livability do some research as well on American relocation habits. And of course, that’s a big part of the motivation and a big part of the decision-making process for people, where are their family and friends as compared to where they’re going to be?

 

Cindy Nixon: Absolutely. And it’s just they may know a little bit about the city, they may have lived there previously, or more times than not, we find that they know nothing. They don’t know anybody other than the people that they’re interviewing with. And we want to give them as much information and find out what their family dynamic is, and how we plug in not just the transferee, but the entire family that would be relocating with them, to make sure that we are getting them all the information for extracurricular activities. Or, something just as simple as a local book club or libraries, or whatever makes that family tick, whatever they do as a family, or what individuals like young kids in dance or sports. We’ve seen all different kinds coming out of a pandemic. People really started to research and get involved in different things that they wanted to, once this world got back into some kind of normalcy. The other thing that we see in some of our communities is the Certified Tourism Ambassadors, and we try to plug in with the tourism in that community, if there is some. Airports have a lot of plugin with the tourism, as well as the chamber, but there’s other entities now that seem to be rising and really starting to draw people in too, whether it’s a corporation or it’s just a family draw people into the area. And we really want to make sure that we’re staying on top of that so that we are giving our clients the most up-to-date information on how to really get involved in a community, in a new community that they are moving into.

 

Amanda Ellis: Cindy, what are some other ways that realtors can be analyzed for community talent attraction, that maybe our listeners aren’t thinking about?

 

Cindy Nixon: I just think that we encourage our agents to be very active. Active members of the chamber, active members of community events, be active in the school systems. Just really promote community in every aspect of their daily lives. And I think when they are immersing themselves in their communities, it’s not only just helping them be the… Want to be the local real estate expert. But being the local community expert and knowing what’s going on and being visible at different community events and happenings in and around the community, it’s truly a partnership that’s going to be able to grow the community itself. We want to have agents that are immersed in the community events because those are the agents that know the happenings around and know if there’s going to be layoffs or knowing if there’s going to be a company that’s going to be bringing a large group of people into the community and how can we best attract the right talent to fill those positions. And you want to always think it’s going to be filled from the community and then go out instead of bringing new people in. Really being able to utilize the talent that’s found within those communities. So I just say active participation in and around the communities is the partnership that really gets a lot of things accomplished to start establishing and building that true form of community.

 

Amanda Ellis: Gotcha. So really just focusing on being involved from all sides, which you would want to do anyway, and then letting that naturally have the impact that it naturally has.

 

Cindy Nixon: Absolutely. Let that grow organically with our partners within the community and, we’ve used this word numerous times, but being an ambassador of the local community is how you’re going to just grow organically within the community and make it feel like it’s got that atmosphere that families and people that live inside the community want to participate in.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yes. So settling in services I know are something you also provide. What does that mean exactly?

 

Cindy Nixon: So our settling in services are for our clients that are coming in from overseas that may have never lived in the country or returning to the country. For those that have never been part of the community inside of the United States, it could be assisting them with something as simple as opening a bank account, getting a social security card, getting a driver’s license. What is going to be needed to be able to purchase a home here for the first time? What is going to be needed to secure a rental if that’s what they are coming in for a short time or a short term assignment and they don’t want to purchase or they’re not able to purchase. And just kind of laying out the land for them. Where do you take your dry cleaning? Where are the local doctors, hospitals, shopping centers? How do we get spousal support of, if the transferee is coming in with a job but the spouse does not have a job, getting them acclimated and settled into the community as well is part of the settling in services that we offer to our clients.

 

Amanda Ellis: What a great idea. And that’s definitely something that Chambers and EDO groups could replicate.

 

Cindy Nixon: Absolutely.

 

Amanda Ellis: Thinking about getting people settled from that perspective of all the cultural differences that come if you’ve not spent much time in the US before. That is very cool.

 

Cindy Nixon: They sometimes don’t even know where to begin. It’s easy to give somebody a checklist, but if they really have not had the experiences, you don’t even know where to start. And it’s very easy to become overwhelmed. We want to take away the stress and the feeling of just being overwhelmed and not knowing where to even begin and just make them feel welcome and that it is as easy as starting, planning and executing what is needed to make them be true members of that community that they’re coming into.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah. And we wouldn’t know probably exactly what to do if we suddenly had to move to a whole other country. So that’s great to give people resources.

 

Cindy Nixon: Absolutely. I would count on somebody that would be able to just take my hand and say, “We’ve got this and we’re going to start here and this is what we’re going to do and this is what we’re going to accomplish. And when it’s all said and done, you know will be integrated in and feel like this is home and you have everything that you need to start this next chapter of your life.”

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah, that’s amazing. My next couple questions, Cindy, are around just all the craziness of the last couple years. Not only with the pandemic, but also with the housing market. So I know it’s a bit complicated out there right now, and it’s changing all the time, so it’s hard to make observations. But some people would say it’s harder to buy than it used to be. If people end up moving to a new community and renting, does that tend to make them feel less tied to the area, or is it more about just what they experience in the community? Any thoughts to share there?

 

Cindy Nixon: We saw with the lack of inventory, but it was going both ways. If somebody was moving into a community where they were looking to purchase and they just were not able to do so within the timeframe that was set for them and they were then trying to go the second route of renting, it was sometimes just as difficult to find a rental as it was to find a home purchase. And I posed this question to a lot of our agents with how do we get them settled, get them ready to start this next chapter, what do we need to do to make that happen and make them feel, again, part of the community, settled, kids in school districts prior to school starting and different things like that. And just making sure that even though they may not be purchasing right away, they are still a very involved part of the community and can be actively immersed in that community. That is what we were having to do with the limited amount of homes that were already enabled to be purchased by our corporate clients that were moving into areas where it was just a feeding frenzy of homes going on the market and having 20 offers by the end of that first day.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah, definitely. So thinking along those same lines, not only all that craziness with inventory, but also remote work and all the many things that we’ve seen really changing in the last few years, have you seen that position some markets, like some areas of the country as more attractive than others? And if so, what does that look like?

 

Cindy Nixon: We definitely have seen transferees that haven’t been asked to move. But because they’ve gone to a more hybrid or remote work for their current employers, they don’t have to live within a certain… If you’re not having to go into the office five days a week and you may only have to go in one day a week or a couple of days a month, do you need to live within that hustle and bustle of that community? So we have seen clients that want to move a little bit further out of. Now, the interesting fact that we are starting to see now is where we weren’t sure where the pandemic was going to take us. What was around the corner may have not been as clear or as visible, and so people moved out thinking that this was going to be the new normal, and now employers are starting to call them back in more to the office. The other thing that we saw is employers did not know where their employees were. Airbnbs and Vbros, people were saying, “Well, if I’ve got to work remotely and I’m not going to be in the office, well I can go to the coast and work at an Airbnb for the next month.” Then we started to see the tax ramifications of that. How are these companies going to pay taxes if these people are spread out all over the various areas. So there’s been quite a few differences that have come through our pandemic, but we are starting to see transferees that don’t want to live as close to the office as they used to, because we do see a more normalized hybrid workforce where you’re not having to be in that office five days a week from nine to five, Monday through Friday, where there’s a little bit more flexibility. In that flexibility, we are seeing people that are asking for more defined home offices or more backyard space. One thing that we really saw through the pandemic was outdoor entertaining. Inground pools became a huge thing for people because they could have that right in their backyard and have that interaction for their families because everything around us was shut down. All of a sudden, we started seeing requests for things that we didn’t traditionally see with somebody moving into a new area. So we started to see where people were asking for larger homes. We’re bringing back that in-law suite again so that we can have aging parents that are living with their families so that they aren’t behind closed doors of an assisted living facility that we didn’t have access to during that pandemic. So there’s a lot that changed in the real estate realm of things because the demands and the wants and the needs of these families changed dramatically through that pandemic.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yes, that all makes a lot of sense. Cindy, do you have any favorite stories of people that your team has gotten to work with or help?

 

Cindy Nixon: I absolutely do. I had a family that was transferring from Singapore into Columbus, Ohio. They had never been to the States. They had been to the New York airport but never left the airport. So the first time that they came over to say that it was cultural shock for them is an understatement. And they ended up living in the area for about seven years. They brought their parents over that they never thought they would get out of their country, and left everything behind. And to this day, they are still in the United States, living happily and whatnot, and we’re just so appreciative for being able to listen to their wants and needs, figure out what’s going to be best for them and immersing themselves into a whole new culture and a whole new lifestyle. It was really neat to see. They had very young children that my children actually were able to interact with as well, and they were part of our community and it was really neat to just kind of see them establish and grow and give back to the community that gave so much to them. That’s one of my ultimate favorite ones. The other one was just domestically, we had a rancher that was moving 17 horses with them and coordinating that. We thought outside of the box, and when you say think outside of the box, we truly had to come up and-

 

Amanda Ellis: Literally.

 

Cindy Nixon: Create almost an entire new policy just for this because it had never been done for this particular client before. And we actually moved them in four steps of the way so that we did not traumatize them by having too much of a… I can’t think of the word I’m looking for. But 17 horses moving from Wyoming into the Florida area was not an easy feat. But I’m happy to say that they all made it successfully. And I absolutely loved helping being part of just figuring out how to do that and how to… Really, I mean, we’re so focused on the human beings and getting them in one place and getting them to feel secure in their new location and have everything that they need.

 

Amanda Ellis: Quite a feat, it sounds like.

 

Cindy Nixon: Absolutely. Yes ma’am.

 

Amanda Ellis: Cindy, thank you so much for all of that great info. I do always like to wrap up our interviews with one fun question.

 

Cindy Nixon: Sure.

 

Amanda Ellis: So where are you based again? Where do you live?

 

Cindy Nixon: I am in Houston, Texas.

 

Amanda Ellis: Okay. What is one bucket list item in Houston that anyone visiting should be sure to do?

 

Cindy Nixon: I would definitely say, go to the Juice Box and see the Astros play at Minute Maid Park. That is something that this community really rallied around them after Harvey and they won the World Series. And that’s one thing that I think everybody that can come to Houston and see a baseball game by our Houston Astros, they never seem to disappoint us. Even when we lose, they never disappoint us. And I love the fact, the way the community rallied and they rallied with the community in a very stressful time for Houstonians during Hurricane Harvey. They really rise to the occasion for us.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yes. Well, Cindy, thank you so much for being on Inside America’s Best Cities today.

 

Cindy Nixon: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

 

Amanda Ellis: Thanks for listening to the Livability Podcast, where we take you inside America’s best cities. At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and midsize cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs. If you enjoy this episode, please follow, rate and review this show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can learn more about us at livabilitymedia.com. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email me at [email protected]. Until next time, from Livability, I’m Amanda Ellis, sharing the stories of America’s most promising places.