A Fab Four: Four local agents with a story to tell
May 2025
The Grand Traverse region has never been short on real estate agents and brokers.
Hundreds of them are out there buying and selling little slices of northern Michigan paradise one closing at a time, and each has a different story about how they got there and what drives their passion for the industry.
The TCBN connects with four local agents who have a tale to tell.
The Cop: Kelly Price, Century 21 Northland, Traverse City
How many local agents have been shot, stabbed and tased over the course of their lives?
We’re guessing it’s a list of one: Kelly Price of Century 21 Northland in Traverse City. Kelly is a New York City (Queens, to be specific) native who began her career in Florida, first as an emergency dispatcher and then a police officer.
She served in many roles over the course of her police career, she says, including narcotics officer, crime scene investigator, detective, DARE officer and more. She has stories for days, of course, including driving around to crime scenes with her young kids in the car, busting the local mayor in a prostitute sting and catching a bullet while responding to a bank robbery.
"I didn't even realize I was hit at first. Thank God it missed my spine and it actually hit me in the fat part of the ass," she said. "I just kept going because the adrenaline was pumping."
It was an enjoyable chapter of her career, she says, but it was incredibly demanding.
"You do your regular job for eight hours, but then the beeper is going off during the other 16," she said. "When you’re crime scene, when you’re vice, three out of four nights that thing is going off."
After the better part of 20 years in that life, Price came to Traverse City, where her husband (also a Florida police officer) is from. After another career chapter as an event coordinator for local dining establishments, Price has been in real estate since 2021 and loves every minute.
She admits to having a by-the-book, matter-of-fact way of going about business that comes from her time in law enforcement.
"I’m able to be very forward and ask the questions that I need answers to. I just don’t fuddle around. I have a unique class of clients who want that," she says. "I’m a strong advocate for my clients, and I think that loyalty is a big deal."
Price, of course, expects straight talk in return.
"Don't call me up and tell me you have a 720 credit score because I know you’ve got a 450 and it just ain't gonna work," she said. "We’re not going to look at houses with a 450 credit score."
Aside from closing deals, Price runs safety classes for local and downstate brokerages. She’s trained hundreds of agents in matters of awareness and self-defense, she says, with most local agents having taken the class.
"When I became a realtor, I wanted to bring my police experience to the realtor world," she said. "Listen, this is the only occupation besides a prostitute where you bring a gentleman into the bedroom that you've never met before. Safety is important."
And while she was president of the Women’s Council of Realtors of Northern Michigan, she’s adamant that these safety classes are not just for women.
"Men are assaulted (too), they just never report it," she said.
The Bean Counter: Alex MacKenzie, Coldwell Banker Commercial – Schmidt Realtors, Traverse City
Many agents come to real estate after time spent in another job, but it’s not all that common for them to leave a successful white-collar career to do so.
Alex MacKenzie earned his bachelor's and master’s degrees in accounting from Michigan State University before passing the CPA exam and beginning his career in private and public accounting in the metro Detroit area. He got married and returned home to Traverse City, where he worked for a local CPA firm for a few more years.
As an accountant he worked with plenty of clients with commercial real estate holdings, and he found that world fascinating. After speaking with a few friends in the business, he made the leap in 2021.
"I didn’t make any money for two years in real estate. It was scary, but it was one of those things where I didn’t want to look back in 10 years and regret it if I didn’t do it," he said. "My wife was very supportive."
His value proposition as an agent is that his background gives him a clear picture of all the aspects of a commercial property.
"I was able to ramp up in this business because of the referrals I got from other agents in the industry," he said. "If somebody has a complicated commercial real estate project ... and they don’t feel comfortable doing it themselves, they’ll refer it to me, and I think they have the confidence in doing that partially because of my background."
He feels his accounting background makes him especially equipped to handle the buying and selling of both businesses and physical real estate.
"Commercial real estate is a lot more complex than the residential side of things a lot of the time … and understanding the nuances involved with the businesses that are operating in these commercial properties is important," he said. "There’s a lot of people in the real estate business that understand the property side of it, but when there’s a business involved, I’m able to look at financial statements and understand what’s going on."
This expertise allows him to provide "all-inclusive" service that his clients appreciate, he says.
"Often time it’s more efficient for the client because they don’t have to go get a full-blown business evaluation, which can cost significantly more money," he said.
Now a few years in, things are going well for MacKenzie. He did 10 times the business in 2024 that he did the year prior, he says, and he continues to build his reputation while also managing 150,000 square feet of real estate and serving some purely accounting clients.
But he’s most happy about feeling "intimately involved in the Traverse City business community."
"There’s large companies that transact real estate all the time, and then there’s mom-and-pop owners that have their retirement nest eggs in their building, and it's a big, emotional process to sell it," he said. "It's nice to add value and be a part of that and really feel like I'm making a difference."
The Producer: Kari King, CENTURY 21 Northland, Frankfort
The proliferation of real estate "teams" means that many sales attributed to an agent may not have been made by the agent themselves. The $40 million in sales under "John Smith" may actually be the product of his work in addition to that of one or more agents who work under him.
Over in Frankfort, hometown native Kari King racked up more than $28 million in sales in 2024 all by herself, roughly doubling her sales from the year prior. Some of these sales were outside of the MLS used for this issue’s realtor rankings, which shows her at $23.4 million.
"It was a crazy year for me," she said. "It really came out of nowhere."
While there isn’t a group of agents working under a "Kari King Team," she’s quick to give credit to a combination of people and factors that have contributed to her success.
"Everything starts with the brokerage and their support of agents. I use a transaction coordinator who I think probably saved my life last year," King said. "She’s been such amazing support behind the scenes."
King knows her genuine local roots have also allowed her to get an edge in the real estate world.
"Connection to the community is the basis of my entire business," she said. "Being born and raised here, I think it makes it easier for me to have that connection. The people I’m working with are the people I grew up with."
Finally, she credits her immediate and extended family for supporting her work, which isn’t contained to a 9-5 schedule. Her parents and husband help her juggle a busy home life with a demanding professional schedule.
"I definitely couldn’t do it without them," she said.
King was born and raised in Frankfort before moving out to Sun Valley, Idaho for eight years while she worked as a sales manager for a sporting goods company. After she started having children, the pull of home became too strong, and she returned to Frankfort.
Her father was a broker at Crystal Mountain for more than 30 years, and her sister is a real estate agent in Grand Rapids. So, she decided to try her hand in the business.
"It ran in the family, plus I had a lot of sales background with my past career, so it was a natural fit," she said.
About a decade on and she’s firing on all cylinders. And while strong sales numbers are always nice, she derives the most joy from continuing to serve her community.
"To be able to help some local families that I know really well find homes and be able to stay within the community means a lot to me," she said. "You see them around town and you get to have that continued connection, which I really appreciate."
The Up-And-Comer: Rebecca Brown, The Mitten Group, Traverse City
It was Rebecca Brown’s quest for her own home that planted the seeds of her real estate journey.
Brown is a Traverse City native who went to Central Michigan University for marketing and public relations. She started pinching her pennies immediately upon landing a job at a local marketing agency.
"When I graduated college and got my first big girl job, I took saving really seriously," she said. "I knew I wanted to get a home young – I didn’t want to rent or anything like that."
She bought her first home at 23. She didn’t have the best experience with real estate agents during this process, and it was then that she first thought about the value she could provide to clients, especially young ones like herself.
"I had to do a lot of work on my own, but I loved being able to answer all of these questions because I had done the research," she said. "What really sparked my interest was the need for a young real estate agent who really understands what young home buyers need. I didn’t feel like there was anybody like me out there in real estate."
After being moved into sales at her marketing job and becoming disillusioned with that world, she connected with old boss and prolific Traverse City businessman Troy Daily, who (among many, many other ventures) is also a real estate agent with The Mitten Group.
Daily brought her on to handle social media and marketing for his businesses while she trained to be a real estate agent. That appealed to Brown as it allowed her to be selective about her real estate endeavors.
"It puts me in a position where I’m not desperate to sell. I never want me keeping my lights on and food in my belly dependent on somebody needing to buy a home," she said. "I don't want them to ever feel like I'm pushing them into buying a home because I need a sale."
Marketing is also something Brown truly enjoys, so she wasn’t ready to give it up entirely.
"I feel like it’s something I’m naturally really good at," she said. "I'm just chronically online."
She’s also using marketing (videos on social media, in particular) to build her own personal brand and business.
"If you ask any top producer right now, I guarantee that cold calling is a major part of their business. And I have so much respect for it, but that's not something that I want to do or that I’m good at," she said. "So for me it was: How can I use social media? How can I put my personality out there? If I can use this tool and this resource and connect with a younger audience and get business from it, then that's awesome."
So far, it’s working. She’s closing deals, and the focus has been where she always wanted it to be.
"I think I've done maybe just under $3 million in volume, and 100% of my closed buyers from my first year on the buy side were all first-time home buyers …who were all primarily young," she said. "That’s very important to me."
Like all young agents, Brown is still learning. The key, she says, is to recognize that fact and embrace it. Giving yourself the time (and patience) to learn and grow will help build a much stronger and successful agent in the long-term, she says.
"When you first start, they talk a lot about how you have to have confidence. But how am I going to have confidence when I literally just started this? I didn't have a transaction for the first four months," she said. "So I looked at: How am I presenting myself? How am I walking into a room? How am I shaking somebody's hand? What is my answer when I don't know the answer? That's a big one."
