How can a guy who puts his face on multiple billboards around town call himself humble and self-effacing? Rogers Healy, a rising star in Dallas real estate, does so without qualms. “The billboards have been great. Marketing is our strongest suit,” says Healy, the 36-year-old founder of Rogers Healy and Associates Real Estate and several other companies. “People recognize our logo, our face, our colors.”
Healy’s tag line is “Real Estate with Personality”—meaning, his personality. In a super-competitive market, he has positioned himself as “the anti-Realtor,” the antithesis of the stereotypical, middle-aged go-getter. At six-feet-five-inches tall, the spiky-haired Healy looks more like a pro athlete or television star.
Healy’s not the only successful Realtor to aggressively market his personal brand. But he goes further than many others to position himself as a celebrity pal and a celebrity himself—someone who knows people you want to know. His brand is strongly identified with high-profile clients like Khloe Kardashian and Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys. In fact, it was Healy who introduced singer/actress Jessica Simpson to the pro quarterback, who once was Healy’s roommate.
Healy’s website drives home the “personality” point. You open the page to encounter a team of racially, ethnically, gender- and age-diverse, “business-minded professionals who just happen to be in real estate.” (He has more than 200 agents.) Some are pictured in wigs, goofy sunglasses, silly hats, and feather boas. Unlike the typically sober real estate website, Healy’s portrait gallery evokes the feel of a dating site.
He admits his approach can be controversial. Some industry veterans scorn Healy because of the flamboyant self-promotion, real estate blogger Candy Evans says. The tack nonetheless brands him with buyers as “a guy who will do anything to sell your house,” she adds. “It’s one way to rise above the crowd.”
A quintessential Dallas entrepreneurial type, Healy attended Southern Methodist University, studying advertising and psychology. After that he tried his hand at acting and comedy in Los Angeles, including some reality TV. He soon returned to Dallas, though, and got into real estate. After working for other brokerages, he launched his own in 2006.
He’s enjoyed considerable success. Several publications have put Healy’s firm on their “Best Places to Work” lists. He says his 2015 sales volume was $225 million; this year, he’s on track to do more than $500 million. In part, that’s because he’s capitalized on his millennial charisma to become a regular on the business and real estate talk-show circuit. Within the span of one week in June, for example, Healy appeared on the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” show once, and on the Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” [Bartiromo] program twice.
A “humbling” recent divorce has deepened his Christian faith, Healy says, and he expresses it openly through teaching Sunday school, Facebook scripture postings, and twice-weekly staff Bible studies. When it comes to jostling to buy and sell real estate in a competitive market like Dallas, after all, a little prayer couldn’t hurt. Even for a millenial star.
