Pleasanton, CA — May 2, 2018 — NextHome is proud to announce our newest addition to the franchise, NextHome SunRaye Realty. The brokerage represents the 39th location opened in the state of Florida for the NextHome franchise.
Based in St. Petersburg, the company will be owned and operated by the husband and wife team of Irwin and Raye Wilensky. They will be joined on the leadership team with Tony Cook and Sami Wilensky. Irwin will be handling most of the day-to-day responsibilities for the company including client relations. Raye will serve as the broker of record. Tony will handle operations for the company, while Sami will be joining the management team as NextHome Sunraye Realty continues regional expansion.
Their brokerage will provide real estate services such as single-family residential sales, first-time home buyers, investment, luxury, multi-family properties, vacation, waterfront property and new home sales to the communities of St. Petersburg, Treasure Island, Tampa, Clearwater, Largo, Pinellas Park, Gulfport, Riverview, and Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Manatee counties.
Starting real estate in 1986, Irwin has been one of the most productive REALTORS® in the St. Petersburg area for more than 30 years. While starting out selling traditional real estate, he was one of the early adopters of foreclosure and bank owned property listings. With a keen understanding of what banks were looking for in listing agents, he positioned himself as the go-to listing agent for REO (Real Estate Owned) properties.
With an average of at least 80-100 sides annually, Irwin and Raye opened SunRaye Realty in 1999.
“As our needs adapted for servicing our listings, we needed to be more flexible with the way we processed and worked with our properties,” said Irwin. “It made sense to open our own brokerage and run our company to best accommodate our sellers.”
After a career in restaurants and bars in South Florida, Tony was getting burned out working the long hours required in restaurant management. He switched careers to real estate in 2003 and learned all aspects of REO and task management of foreclosure listings.
With his hard work and organizational skills, Tony was able to assist in listings for the brokerage, managing as many as 40 listings at a time.
With Irwin, Raye, and Tony working together, Sunraye Realty saw tremendous growth in 2012-2014. The brokerage closed more than 2,000 transactions sides in the three-year period.
As the real estate market changed, so did Sunraye Realty’s need to diversify away from foreclosures.
“When we did research on different franchises that we could align with, they all seemed the same,” recalls Tony. “But when we saw the NextHome model, we were blown away with what we saw in both value and marketing. It was the fresh, new feel that we had been looking for.”
“We reached out to an existing NextHome franchise owner to find out if the company really was delivering on these promises,” added Irwin. “Once we talked to (NextHome Beach Time Realty owner) Annie Fleeting, we were ready to move forward with the franchise.”
Please join us in congratulating Irwin, Raye, Tony, Sami and the rest of the team at NextHome Sunraye Realty on the opening of their brand new NextHome office in St. Petersburg, FL!
Interested in being a part of the NextHome Real Estate Franchise? Contact VP of Sales Charis Moreno at Charis@NextHome.com.
Each office is an independently owned and operated business.