My name is Andrew Dougill, and I’m one of the owners of Hoffman Realty, along with my wife, MaryAnn Hoffman. MaryAnn founded the company in 1998, after she graduated from the University of South Florida. Almost immediately, some of her investor owners asked if she would manage and lease some of their rental properties. So, one thing led to another.
More than 30 years later, we are proud to have served thousands of landlords and renters in the Tampa Bay area.
Andrew and MaryAnn Fall in Love with Tampa Bay (and each other)
It’s safe to say MaryAnn and I took disparate routes to finding the lifestyle we love here in Tampa.
Born and raised and schooled in England, I ventured to this tropical paradise when I was recruited to work in the computer industry. I was tired of the cold, wet, damp, windy, dreary winters in England, so I jumped at the opportunity. MaryAnn had hiked through enough snowstorms growing up in Ohio that she, too, was ready for a change.
As a student at Bowling Green University, MaryAnn bumped into a cousin who was very upset that an exchange student had dropped out of a planned trip to Florida. She filled in, and the rest – as they say – is history. MaryAnn and I quickly fell in love with the area, and each other.
The Real Estate Market Takes a Nasty Turn
The event that I most clearly remember in the journey of Hoffman Realty occurred in 2005.
One week in June, the phones in our office virtually stopped ringing. It was eerie. We surmised that the smart investor had decided to stop buying. It was the early start to the real estate crash. It took another two years for the worst to happen, but we knew things were changing. MaryAnn and I immediately sold three of our properties.
That wasn’t an easy decision because one of them was our own home; a property we had been building ourselves over the last 18 months, and it was weeks away from being finished. The other two were rental properties that were part of our retirement plan. We had worked really hard to pay off those mortgages, and we owned the properties free and clear.
However, I’m glad we did sell those properties. When the market crashed in 2007, our company lost a lot of money. We also lost money in 2008 and 2009. The money from those sales in 2005 allowed us to keep the doors open and all our staff in place while the company was losing money for those three years.
Then, when the smart money started coming back into the real estate market in 2010, we were one of only a handful of property management companies in Tampa that was in business. Better yet, we had the experienced staff, the tools, and the capacity to help those new investors, and our company quickly grew again.
The Hoffman Realty Mission: To Serve, Educate, and Build Relationships
Our passion is to serve, educate, and build relationships with our customers. We answer many questions in regards to managing your property.
To serve means the customer is first. We put people before profits. If you work in our office, you will often hear MaryAnn telling customers: “we only want what’s best for you.”
To educate means that we understand leasing, managing, purchasing, selling, and owning rental property is a complex endeavor. Our team loves to share our knowledge, and we have a large archive of very helpful blog articles on our website for property owners and investors.
To build relationships means exactly what it says. We have managed properties for some of our investors for over 20 years. During that time, we have seen them get married and have children. We’ve watched their children grow. We get a lot of personal satisfaction from making a difference in the lives of our customers, and seeing them achieve their personal and investment goals.
Hoffman Realty is not about us or our people or our systems or our technology. It’s really about our customers. Customers have allowed us to serve them, trusted us with their largest investments, and have guided our evolution and our journey over the last 30-plus years.
Thank you for sharing our journey. If you’d like to be part of what we do, please contact us at Hoffman Realty.