By Kate Merrihew – Director of Education and Marketing
This month’s Team Spotlight shares Dorothy’s sentiment from the Wizard of Oz, “there’s no place like home.” Stuart Gregg was born and raised in Pike County. He lives down the street from his sister and a close distance from 15 more family members – and that’s the way he likes it.
Stuart learned much of his current “rise and shine” work ethic from his childhood on the family farm – Gregg Farms. To this day, he still works each summer in the family peach orchards and around the farm. He remembered waking up and picking blueberries to sell in the store, riding around on the 4-wheeler and catching roadside peach thieves. This summer was the first that he can recall without peaches. February 2023 brought warm weather that woke up the flowers only to lay them back down with a cold snap a few weeks later. Stuart spent the summer cutting grass but is hopeful that next year will bring back the fruit.
In high school, Stuart was a 4-sport athlete (football, basketball, baseball and tennis) but he recounted that that was due to a small class size and the needs for players. He graduated with 18 students and matriculated to UGA, a slightly bigger school in Athens. *He noted that he attended the same high school and college as his parents. At UGA, Stuart studied real estate and enjoyed his valuation class. While still in college, he emailed a bunch of appraisers but no one was accepting trainees. Enter D.S. Murphy at the college fair. He has been an appraiser with D.S. Murphy for more than 6 years and is currently a Team Lead in Middle Georgia. He also passed his SRA exam 1 week ago, putting him among 1% of appraisers in the nation.
When I hear Stuart’s name mentioned around DSM, it is usually synonymous with high achievement and quick turnaround. I asked him about this and he responded, “I call Jeremy every day and compare numbers. I set up reports before I leave the house. Fill out everything on my iPad and schedule everything in a circle. I never backtrack.” Stuart is a morning person and enjoys getting most work done early so that he can utilize as much of the daytime as possible. When he isn’t working on 1,000 appraisals, he enjoys hunting and fishing (bird-hunting especially), riding his side-by-side and fantasy football. He is an avid Dawgs, Braves, Falcons fan and is always willing to support the team at DSM as well.
I was personally captivated by how family-oriented Stuart was and wondered if he planned to continue living in such proximity. He confirmed that that was an extremely important part of his life and he always saw himself living there. He sees his dad “pretty much every day“ and used to share an office with his mom. He meets family members for lunch often and enjoys having everyone close. As he put it, “you can visit for 30 minutes and not feel like you have to stay for hours but you can if you want.” For a people-driven, relationship-building focused company like D.S. Murphy, this is about as good as it gets.
I asked Stuart the following questions…
Q: What made you want to be an appraiser?
A: My dad is also a builder and I’ve always been around houses. I didn’t want to be a builder but I wanted to be involved in real estate. I’m more math-oriented than anything and when I learned how to do appraisals, that was a better fit.
Q: What would you like to do when you are no longer appraising?
A: I will probably just be farming, working at the peach orchard and that will be it.
Q: What the weirdest thing you have come across when inspecting/appraising?
A: I went to this house in Clayton County (re-fi). It was a pretty dirty house and the owner let me know that she let homeless people live there. She had put up some “walls” to separate rooms. There were 7 people in there. They were smoking cigarettes in all of the spaces with no windows and no ventilation.
Q: Something no one knows about you?
A: My life’s a pretty open book. I can’t really think of anything.
Q: What words of wisdom can you share with the team?
A: Get everything done as early as possible. That’s the key to getting more work done and not having anyone get on you. The earlier the better.