Most people hire one real estate agent and hope they picked a good one. When you work with our team, you get two, and I think that is one of the biggest advantages I can offer a client. This week I brought my partner, Donna Ciccarelli, onto the show to tell her story, because the way we work together is not a marketing line. It is the reason clients keep coming back. Let me introduce you to Donna, explain what two realtors for the price of one really means, and share where we both see Central Texas heading.
Key Takeaways
You get two experienced agents on every deal at no extra cost, which means two sets of eyes on your transaction and a much lower chance of a costly surprise. Donna’s deep farm and ranch and land background pairs with my residential focus, so the team covers homes in town and property out in the country. And in this market, both of us will tell you the truth about pricing, because going by the data beats chasing a number every time.
How did a two-realtor partnership come together?
Donna will be the first to tell you she came into real estate kicking and screaming. She has a background in psychology and sociology, and she always figured she would work with at risk kids. As she puts it, real estate turned out to be the same job in a lot of ways, because buying or selling a home is one of the most stressful things most people ever do. Somewhere along the way it became a ministry for her, a way to serve people through a hard decision.
Her start in the business was not gentle. Back in the 1980s a family tragedy wiped out the leadership of her first husband’s development company almost overnight, and she was asked to swim in the deep end with no license and no experience. She found out she had a knack for it. Over the years she restored a 4,200 square foot historic home in a town of 325 people and turned it into a bed and breakfast, earned her license in 1997, and became one of the top farm and ranch agents working out of Glen Rose, at one of the oldest farm and ranch brokerages in Texas.
We met at a former brokerage, back when I was brand new. I had spent 25 years in corporate America, and I was sitting in what we called the bullpen when I noticed that Donna, who was already producing 13 to 15 million dollars a year on her own, kept stopping to answer everyone else’s questions. When I got my first transaction I asked if she would look it over so I did not miss anything, and she spent four hours with me that day. I could not believe someone at her level would give that kind of time to a beginner. I asked her to mentor me, offered to wax her car and do her dry cleaning, and after she told me no more times than I can count, she finally wore down. That was years ago, and it has been the best partnership of my career.
What does two realtors for the price of one actually mean for you?
It means that even if you only ever meet with one of us, both of us are working on your deal. Donna and I sit down every week and go through our transactions, the challenges, and the things to watch for. When you have someone with that much experience looking at your file and saying be careful of that, or have you thought about this, it changes outcomes. It is the out of the forest view, where a second experienced set of eyes catches the thing you cannot see when you are standing in the middle of it.
The two of us also bring genuinely different strengths. I tend to go deep and detailed, investigating every angle until I am clear on it. Donna is big picture, a natural with people, and she reads a room better than anyone I know. Sometimes a client responds better to her approach, sometimes to mine, and at an open house or a negotiation we can play off each other in a way a solo agent simply cannot. Back in 2022 we landed in the top 1.5 percent of realtors in the country out of more than six and a half million agents. We did not even know until the award showed up, because we were too busy taking care of the clients in front of us.
What makes Donna’s background so valuable?
Range. Most agents do one thing. Donna has done economic development, historical restoration, new construction, and farm and ranch, and every one of those experiences shows up in how she serves clients. Her superpower is that she looks completely unassuming, so people let their guard down, and then she quietly does exactly what needs to be done. I have watched her land a listing after striking up a conversation at a coffee shop. On one listing with a serious car collector, she mentioned that she used to do leather upholstery for Mustangs and had once been driven around a track by Carroll Shelby, and the man was eating out of her hand. She is not manipulative, she is just genuinely interesting and genuinely good with people.
What should you know about buying farm and ranch land here?
This is where Donna’s expertise really pays off, because land is a different animal and it is not for the faint of heart. With a home, you look at comps and condition. With land, you also have to think about the highest and best use, and that pulls in the county commissioners, the extraterritorial jurisdiction, transportation plans, utilities, and sometimes economic development incentives. If you want to subdivide, you are looking at surveys, ingress and egress, and a process that can take a year or two before you ever break ground.
Even a recreational ranch takes real thought. What do you actually want to do with it? If you are after dove, we can clear the brush and plant sunflowers and the birds will come. If you do not want to run cattle to hold your ag exemption, we look at a wildlife exemption instead, which means getting the county involved on what species qualify. Then there is the dirt itself, the aquifers, how deep the wells have to go, and yes, the fencing. Donna likes to say you need to know how to carry a stick out there. The point is that buying land well requires someone who has actually done it, and that is exactly what she brings.
What do the next several years of Austin real estate look like?
We have been in crazy town for a few years. During the pandemic Donna had a single listing draw more than 300 couples through in one weekend, and prices went straight up. That has cooled. There is more inventory now and buyers have choices, but a lot of sellers are still living in the days of high two and three percent interest rates, and that mindset has to catch up to the market. Per the Unlock MLS Central Texas Housing Report, the Austin metro sat at about 4.4 months of inventory in June 2026, with the median sale price around 450,000 dollars, so this is a more balanced market than the frenzy years, not a collapse.
For buyers, the three real forces right now are affordability, volatility, and uncertainty. If you can get comfortable with today’s rates, there are genuinely good deals out there, and there is usually a chance to refinance down the road. For sellers, it comes back to what Donna and I always say. Prepare the property and be realistic about the price. Over the last couple of years the Austin Board of Realtors has shown far more homes cutting their prices than the market can absorb, and the ones that sit are almost always the ones that ignored the data. Longer term, we are optimistic. Texas keeps attracting employers and the supporting companies that follow them, the economy here is diversified, and as Donna put it, we still have dirt and people want it.
A few questions we hear all the time
Do I really get two agents at no extra cost? Yes. Our fee is the same as working with one agent, and both of us are involved in the strategy behind your transaction.
Is buying land really that different from buying a house? It is. Land brings in zoning, exemptions, utilities, and county and city processes that can take a year or more, so you want an agent who has genuinely done it.
Is now a good time to buy in Austin? If you can handle the current rate, there are strong deals, and refinancing later is often an option. The worst move is trying to time it perfectly.
What if I disagree with your pricing advice? We will show you the data and tell you the truth, then it is your call. We would rather have the hard conversation up front than watch a home sit and take reduction after reduction.
The Bottom Line
Real estate is personal and high stakes, and you cannot return a house to Amazon, so it is worth having experienced people who will tell you the truth in your corner. With our team you get two of them. If you are thinking about a move in Central Texas, whether it is a home in the suburbs or land out in the country, reach out and let’s talk it through. No pressure, just a straight answer.
Written by Richard Fowler, REALTOR with the ARK Property Team at Pure Realty, alongside partner Donna Ciccarelli. Published July 29, 2026. Last updated July 29, 2026.
