ACME is featured in Los Angeles Magazine
Remember the moment in 2011 when you started to look at real estate again? Foreclosures and short sales were driving prices down, your friends had horror stories about buying high and selling low, real estate agents across the city were declaring their new career choice. But you started to see some really cute properties at an affordable price in LA neighborhoods you never knew existed. There was a clearing in the market. From that clearing, ACME Real Estate emerged.
Driven by a love of affordable design and a deeply-rooted belief in the transformational power of accessible housing, ACME opened its eastside headquarters and began the task of inventing how to reshape the way buyers could see properties again–it was a reimagining of trust in a market that had publicly failed. Buyers wanted security. ACME delivered on that dream.
Lead by tattooed and outspoken powerhouse broker/owner, Courtney Poulos, a 16-year-veteran of the real estate business, author of “Break Up! With Your Rental!”, Poulos and her hand-selected team set out to up the marketing stakes.
“I saw our industry giving up. MLS printouts at the open houses, agents disinterested in the clientele. The houses were either cheaply remodeled or not even shot professionally. It wasn’t good enough,” explains Poulos.
Poulos and her small team, now a 46-agent brokerage with two offices and an expansion brokerage in Central Florida, hired best-in-class graphic designers, generating magazine-quality brochures with emotive architectural photography, representing the essence of the holistic lifestyle quality of a home. No home is just “a listing.” ACME offerings have come to symbolize how buyers want to live. “We hunted for undiscovered photographers and coached them how to shoot in a way that delivers an experience. When we started, no one was doing ‘vignette’ shots for properties under a million dollars! Sellers weren’t staging and when they did, it was out of touch with the vibe of the buying public. I’m humbled to see many of the photographers and stagers we discovered early on exploding throughout the city! It’s wild.”
As prices have gone up, competitors and imitators have picked up on the magic sauce that make ACME houses so distinctive in the market. ACME continues to innovate, bringing respectful design to every neighborhood it touches, focusing on inclusion in leadership and recruitment, intensifying the training, investing more energy and effort in the quality of ACME agents and delivering a superior client experience, paying close attention to that “IT” factor that is not replicable.
Silke Fernald and Dominique Madden, Broker Associates now managing the office at West Adams, are leading the charge. Remarks Madden, “From day one, ACME and its agents strive to set the highest standard in regards to market approach and client representation. Every agent receives one-on-one training and mentorship from industry vets with three decades of experience collectively to arm them with the tools to navigate the hottest housing market in the world with grace and consciousness.”
“The ACME experience is like high-end boutique shopping! Our clients get an enthusiastic and attentive agent who genuinely cares. It’s that first-class attitude to representation that makes all the difference. Our buyers have lovingly coined the term ‘ACME house’ – The word on the street is ‘I want to buy an ACME house!’ That tells you a lot about the impact we make and continue making on the real estate market. High-level service, integrity, and ethics are mandates,” asserts Fernald.
Concludes Poulos, “There is no better home for invention in real estate marketing and sales than ACME. We know the value we bring to the table — over a decade of marketing for sellers the exact homes that buyers are buying right now. It’s no accident that our listings are the most popular in the market. It’s a methodology, and we see only growth on the horizon.”
ACME can be found online at www.acme-re.com, on Instagram at @acmerealestate. Offices are located in Eagle Rock and West Adams. Break Up! With Your Rental is available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon