How Krystine Eppley Builds Communities Through Real Estate & Volunteerism

Welcome to another compelling episode of Housing4Good, where we delve into the lives and careers of real estate professionals who are making a difference in their communities. In this episode, we have the privilege of speaking with Krystine Eppley, a dedicated real estate professional and passionate community advocate. Krystine’s unique journey showcases how real estate can be a powerful tool for building stronger communities and enriching lives. Join us as we explore her dual role in the Tucson area, where she seamlessly blends her career with a deep commitment to volunteerism.

Krystine Eppley: A Dual Role in Real Estate and Volunteerism

Krystine Eppley has carved out a remarkable path in the real estate industry, where her work extends far beyond buying and selling homes. As a real estate agent deeply embedded in the Tucson community, Krystine doesn’t just view her role as a job but as a platform for creating positive change. Her dual role as a real estate professional and a dedicated volunteer allows her to impact lives on multiple levels.

In this episode, Krystine discusses how she manages to balance her thriving real estate career with her commitment to community service. She shares insights into her daily life, explaining how volunteerism is not just an add-on to her career but an integral part of it. By integrating her professional expertise with her passion for giving back, Krystine exemplifies how real estate can be a conduit for community building.

Making a Lasting Impact: The Power of Community Service

Krystine’s impact on the Tucson community is profound. Through her volunteer work, she has become a vital force in local initiatives, contributing to causes that promote health, education, and social well-being. In this episode, she talks about the various organizations she supports and how her involvement has shaped her perspective on real estate.

Krystine believes that real estate is more than just transactions; it’s about creating spaces where communities can thrive. Her work in Tucson demonstrates the ripple effect of combining professional skills with a commitment to volunteerism. By investing her time and resources into community projects, Krystine is not only helping individuals but also fostering a stronger, more connected Tucson. Her story serves as an inspiring example for others in the industry who are looking to make a difference beyond the business of real estate.

Mentorship and Leadership: Guiding the Next Generation

Krystine Eppley is not only a leader in her community but also a mentor to aspiring real estate agents. In this episode, she offers valuable advice on how to integrate community service into a successful real estate career. Krystine shares her experiences mentoring younger agents, emphasizing the importance of building relationships and giving back.

Her approach to mentorship is deeply intertwined with her community work. Krystine believes that by teaching the next generation of agents to care about their communities, they can contribute to a more compassionate and responsible real estate industry. She discusses the rewards of mentorship, both in terms of personal fulfillment and professional growth, and how it has helped shape her own career.

The Heart of Real Estate and Community

Krystine Eppley’s story is a testament to the power of combining professional success with a passion for community service. Her dual role as a real estate professional and a community advocate highlights the potential for real estate to be a force for good. Krystine’s work in Tucson serves as a powerful reminder that true success is measured not just by financial achievements but by the positive impact we make on the lives of others.

If you’re inspired by Krystine’s journey and would like to connect with her, you can reach out to her on LinkedIn or through Coldwell Banker. Whether you’re looking for guidance in real estate or interested in community service, Krystine is always eager to connect with like-minded individuals.

Do you have any questions or comments about this episode? Or perhaps you know an outstanding real estate professional whose story should be told? Contact Tom Heath today to share your thoughts or to nominate someone for a future episode of Housing4Good. Together, we can highlight the incredible work being done at the intersection of real estate and community service.

Tom Heath
Well, welcome back to another episode of housing for good, where we get to talk to amazing real estate agents who are not only successful the real estate world, but their efforts sort of transcend that and also really strong in our community and making things happen. All these episodes are available through audio podcast on the Mortgage Guidance Group Spotify page, and it's also, on housing for good.com.

Tom Heath
If you want to listen to this or or other of our interviews. And today we have Krystine Eppley with Coldwell Banker. Welcome to housing for good.

Krystine Eppley
Thank you for having me.

Tom Heath
I, I understand from your bio that you are not from Tucson.

Krystine Eppley
Am not.

Tom Heath
Now, how did you get here?

Krystine Eppley
I moved here in 2002.

Tom Heath
Okay, see me a while.

Krystine Eppley
I've been here a long time. I officially lived here longer than I've lived back home.

Tom Heath
Okay. That counts for something. Where was?

Krystine Eppley
Back home. New York. Upstate.

Tom Heath
Upstate.

Krystine Eppley
New York. Buffalo area.

Tom Heath
Okay.

Krystine Eppley
So, Bill.

Tom Heath
So we can edit that to worry about that. So upstate New York, it's snowing, it's chilly. You've got professional sports team, and you wake up one day and say, hey, I got to Tucson.

Krystine Eppley
I moved out here with my mom and my stepdad years ago. Okay. And, I have a whole nother story that we can get into at another time.

Tom Heath
Okay. Ooh. Teaser. Are. We had a podcast. You know, the back story. That's our new podcast. These are called the backstory.

Krystine Eppley
The backstory. We'll do follow ups. Okay. But, yeah, I've lived here, for over 20 something years. Yeah, I do love it here.

Tom Heath
And then you. How long have you been in real estate then?

Unknown
Welcome back to another episode of Housing for Good. Where we get to talk to amazing real estate agents whom. For 20 years, we have more. The residential leasing.

Tom Heath
What was that transition? And what caused that?

Krystine Eppley
It was difficult. I thought going from property management over to residential would be a cakewalk. But my first year in real estate, I made less than $1,000, and it was pretty tough.

Tom Heath
You go for all those watching HGTV like you just pick three.

Krystine Eppley
Okay.

Tom Heath
We're good. Yeah.

Krystine Eppley
It was it was definitely a struggle. Lots of tears, lots of emotion. Went into my first year learning the difference from property management to residential. And then a light bulb switched when I found the right mentor. Okay. And just skyrocketed from. From there.

Tom Heath
Well, good. That's we've heard that from a lot of the agents that we've interviewed there, someone a coach or a mentor or someone a manager within their organization or outside that they found that just help them identify their best path for the week. Right before the, we started taping, you had made the comment, there's no special sauce to real estate.

Tom Heath
And then everybody thinks, oh, if I do it this way, because this is how this person was successful, then I will be successful and everyone has to find their own path.

Krystine Eppley
Yeah, well, that's why there's thousands of realtors. Everybody has their person for where they connect to and people want to work with you because of who you are versus how someone else. You're not reinventing the wheel. You're still doing the same thing, but you're being authentic to yourself.

Tom Heath
Yeah, I think authenticity is it's, underrated. In this market for my limited. Limited. Right. So then on on the professional side, you you, have had success. I mean, it's not like you. You've made more than $1,000 in most recent. Yeah. A little bit more. You've done you've done well. You've had, a good mix of buyers and sellers and kind of working through that.

Tom Heath
And, I don't remember the exact year, but it was with the last couple of years. You got a recognition from the association to some association realtors.

Krystine Eppley
I did, and it was very, unexpected. But, it was just, you know, everybody wants to be recognized for their hard work in a different way. And through the association and getting that award was just it was just knowing that what I'm doing, it's making an impact somewhere.

Tom Heath
What was the name of the award?

Krystine Eppley
It was the, customer service Stanley Cup. Standard customer service award.

Tom Heath
So people recognizing that you deliver and deliver that experience. That's fantastic. That's truly a testament to the to the professional side. And then you also you got involved. At what point did you get involved with like the association committees and and boards and such? When you start really getting, in there?

Krystine Eppley
It's been probably four years now. Okay. I want to say that I dabbled into it, and I was just a director and then moved into.

Tom Heath
Just a director making decisions for an organization of 6000 people and representing them always seemed like it just adds why I just did that.

Krystine Eppley
I just did that. But I was moved into the higher role, into the officer positions as VP. President elect and then now president.

Tom Heath
And this with either the charitable foundation board, correct.

Krystine Eppley
The Tucson Rotary Charitable Foundation.

Tom Heath
Okay. And and so, you know, I wish you to talk to me four years ago because I, I've made these mistakes myself. And when I've told everyone that that actually asks when you get on these committees is don't oversee. Because when you over achieve like oh you can do more. Yeah. Like oh I can do that. And then you do my, oh you should do this.

Tom Heath
Yeah. Next thing you know you're you're everything. You know you're not going to find a bunch of means to do all this work. But I know it's rewarding and you enjoy it. Can you talk a little bit about the foundation itself? Sort of its purpose?

Krystine Eppley
Yeah. So the Tucson Realtors Charitable Foundation is a 501 C3. We basically, raise funds to give out quarterly grants. My term, we were able to increase the quarterly grants from 10,000 to 12,500.

Tom Heath
And other recipients of these, like other real estate agents or who gets the gets to go?

Krystine Eppley
Everyone has to do a grant application process. They have to be vetted. They have to be A501 C3 and they have to be local for Tucson.

Tom Heath
Okay.

Krystine Eppley
Then our board meets. We go over the grants together, we've set them, and we make sure where their funds are going to and where they're being allocated. And then once we are able to give them a grant, we also do facility tours so we can actually see the facilities and see what they're doing.

Tom Heath
That's what I didn't realize you did that. That's such a nice component because not only are you writing a check for maybe $15,000, it's not all of them get the larger amount. Some get smaller amounts, I assume. Yeah. They have a maximum amount. A lot of times we write these checks like okay, good luck. And you might see the impact at an award ceremony or but to have the ability to go and explore what they do on a day to day basis, that's fine.

Krystine Eppley
Yeah, I like to call it my project of boots on the ground. We are able to go to the facilities, see what they're doing. We also find out their events that they have coming up. And with the foundation, we meet so many local charities that we can connect them with like minded charities so they can help each other and the community.

Tom Heath
Okay, so that maybe they didn't weren't an award recipient, cause I know from past experience that you get more requests than you have dollars to give out. Yes.

Krystine Eppley
So our max that we can do per quarter is 12,500. And we've had grant requests equaling up to over $70,000, sometimes per hour. So that definitely helps to give back to TRC so we can make a bigger impact on the community.

Tom Heath
What is sort of the average grant that someone might receive if there is such a thing?

Krystine Eppley
It depends. We've had some from $1,000 up to $100,000 requests. And of course, it's as much as we can give per quarter, and we have multiple applications that come in at a time. Sometimes we'll have 13 or more grant applications that come in. So it's the very strategic breakdown that we have to do to vet these guys out.

Tom Heath
So it's not necessarily like I said earlier, someone might not get the 12 five. Right okay. But you might give that out to we.

Krystine Eppley
Try to distribute as much as we can across the board.

Tom Heath
Okay.

Krystine Eppley
Okay. We did a huge one, for the, the city of Tucson through the Essential Worker program.

Tom Heath
Yeah. Remember that $100,000 that we were able to donate to that, that went into a down payment assistance program and essential workers.

Unknown
Resources for those times of the year.

Unknown
Training is going to.

Unknown
Major industries in the future.

Unknown
each of us have our own different roles. That I could do this this year for my term is by committee. So a lot of.

Krystine Eppley
The events that we used.

Unknown
To do, these types of events is. But now we have someone to turn to. We are we have someone in charge of.

Krystine Eppley
Keeping our historic records. And, we have, a holiday committee that's going to come up for us. Our holiday toy drive that we're doing. We have our golf events that we do. There's a lot of things that we have. The newest one that we're doing this year is the Arizona Bowl, which we're really excited about. Okay.

Krystine Eppley
Partnering with them on that.

Tom Heath
Okay. The, the gin and juice.

Krystine Eppley
The gin and juice.

Tom Heath
Is that why you're partnering and trying to. And we.

Krystine Eppley
Would love to meet.

Tom Heath
Someone when you get over here. What's the partnership look like?

Krystine Eppley
So, the Arizona Bowl actually get granted us tickets, so we're able to sell them at a presale discounted rate. And any money that we are able to collect for selling those tickets, we get to keep at the foundation.

Tom Heath
Oh that's fantastic.

Krystine Eppley
It kind of works like the Jim Clark Millions for Tucson, right? Oh, we're also doing that selling. And so any of that money that we collect is able to get back into the community. So our goal this year was to raise $75,000. I have a feeling that will surpass that. Good. So I'm hopeful.

Tom Heath
That kind of.

Krystine Eppley
Knock on wood knocking.

Tom Heath
Over here. Yeah.

Tom Heath
so there's really a few different aspects of this. We think about doling out the grants, which I know it's hard, but it's also sort of the fun part. Right? You get to really see this impact, and then you have to make tough decisions. But then that's that's done quarterly, but throughout the year, then you have to replenish those funds.

Tom Heath
And how do like how do people support the foundation and golfing going to the Arizona Bowl. Like where where do people get more information on all this?

Krystine Eppley
All of our events are listed under the Tucson realtors.org, which is under the Tucson Association of Realtors. They can go to the see if events that are coming up. They can, sign up to be a part of our Veterans Day golf, which is coming up. The Arizona Bowl, you can purchase pre-sale tickets. We also have the Jim Click millions for raffle tickets and make a purchase.

Krystine Eppley
Also, if you are a realtor member and you're redoing your MLS dues, there's a little box that says if you'd like to donate $25 to your CF, that's another option that you could.

Tom Heath
Get a one time donation or like, oh.

Krystine Eppley
There is a way to set it up to do a repeat.

Tom Heath
So every year, every year when you do your renew, renew your subscription to MLS, you would also support the foundation for the $25 once a year, something like a monthly. Right.

Krystine Eppley
Okay. Yeah. And you could set it up to do monthly. That would be great.

Tom Heath
We might now send it back to. There's too much money. We're taking this. We've surpassed our goal. We got to give it back. What about volunteering? And obviously the committees or the committee of the board of volunteers? But do you need volunteers for, like, the golf tournament or something that beyond that?

Krystine Eppley
Yeah, we're always looking for volunteers. And, the role that I put on our chairs for our committees is to invite outside members to be on those committees. So you don't have to be a board member to be a part of what TCF is doing. I also created a Facebook page that is a volunteer, committee website. So you can kind of see all the grants that we've donated to all the different charities, what they need help with in the community, how you can sign up to go help for them.

Krystine Eppley
So it's not just their US of who can volunteer with us, but also through the other charities.

Tom Heath
And I was I got sidetracked on that comment earlier that you made about how you connect, organizations together. So people may have applied and not necessarily gotten the grant that they wanted or as much as they needed. But then you also have other resources where you can connect them to. Now, some, like volunteers and other organizations that might be able to to further their mission.

Krystine Eppley
Yeah. So if, for example, we had done a grant with the Boys and Girls Club and they had a huge event that was coming up, and I think they still need it. They're looking for 100 males for the, the youngins over at the Boys and Girls Club to partner up with them because they need male mentors.

Krystine Eppley
So we had shared that on our community page of anybody in the community that wanted to come help volunteer. So things like that for other places to see, and how they can also go help the lot on 22nd is huge. I think they just became A50123, youth on their own. And, the young professional network, they're also partnering up with the lot on 22nd to.

Krystine Eppley
So there's just a lot that Tucson has to offer, which.

Tom Heath
Is a lot on 22nd.

Krystine Eppley
So they basically meet very frequently. I don't know their schedule off the top of my head, but they feed the homeless, they have full meals. They offer it, nights and holidays, rain or shine. They're out there giving that food.

Tom Heath
Okay, okay. And that's obviously something that, the foundation not only is donating to, but you're helping to drive interest in a recognition and awareness so that others can support, like the young professionals and in other groups.

Krystine Eppley
Exactly. And a lot of people that I've meet, realtors, affiliates, things like that, they've never heard of the Tucson Realtors Charitable Foundation. So we're we're trying to spread the word about what we do for the community. And by able to give grants and as much as we can, and also putting the community together to see what other foundations are out there and what charities are doing that because Tucson is huge when it comes to charity.

Krystine Eppley
But what we're probably the biggest community wise of who gets back there.

Tom Heath
We have a lot of nonprofits in Tucson to help as well too. Yeah, and a lot of them are doing good. And if you can support any of them, it's worthwhile. Well, as a as someone I know whose time is very limited, I really appreciate that you would take that much time to, to share and then to further come in here and, and tell us more.

Tom Heath
So thank.

Krystine Eppley
You for having.

Tom Heath
Me. Christy Napoli, Coldwell Banker, one of those agents of housing for good, knocking out of the park as a professional real estate agent and also, equally as impressive as a community advocate and serving to.

Krystine Eppley
I appreciate that. Thank you