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Profile Nancy Avedisian
This Santa Fe New Mexican Real Estate Guide interview series focuses on Realtors in the Santa Fe area. Nancy Avedisian is the owner of Plaza Realty de Santa Fe LLC and a member of the Independent Broker Network.
- How long have you been in this business?
A little over seven years, and I've been in Santa Fe almost 28 years.
- You've seen quite a few changes in that time. What comes to mind?
Pavement. There were no subdivisions then, except for Casa Solana and Casa Alegre and Bellamah, the older ones. Bob Blagg sold me my first house for $54,000. It was a three-bedroom Stamm home in Casa Solana. I've been in my second house off East Zia for 22 years now.
- Is that near [photography dealer] Andrew Smith's old house?
That's 810 Camino Acoma, which is the house my partner, Max Aragon, has been building.
- Where were you born?
At 59 Milburn Street, Rockville Center, on Long Island, but I only lived there for seven years. We moved to southern California, in La Crescenta, which was right next door to the Hog Farm. I was part of a light show and concert production company when I was in high school and we put on a lot of rock concerts in that area.
The day after I graduated from high school I went up to the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies at Sonoma State College. I'm selling a home in La Cueva that's owned by one of my professors from back then.
- What did you study?
Liberal Studies and History. Women's history and Russian history, and [the artist Wassily] Kandinsky was a focus for me. Twelve of us organized a semester in Europe. We went all over the continent looking at the history, music, art, the museums, the people. I was with the class for a few months and then I was on my own for a few months. My kids won't believe that I lived on $ 2 a day.
After I graduated I was one of the people who worked on Cristo's Running Fence.
Then I got my paralegal certificate and I came here. My first job was working on the Aamodt water- rights issue. One of the first things I did was to call people in the Tesuque- Pojoaque area to bring their papers in to be copied and I got to see all the old ones come in holding documents that were hundreds of years old stating their rights to water. After several years I was hired as assistant to the deputy for cabinet affairs in Governor Carruthers' office.
That was a time when they were testing containers to transport nuclear waste. We didn't have a hazardous-waste emergency plan, and they put me in charge of getting everyone together to get a plan in place.
After that I didn't want to work for anyone ever again so I began my own video- services company and I ran that for 15 years. Also at that time I wrote a screenplay with a friend and we coauthored a series of career role- modeling books for pre- teen girls. I realized I had to put something together to get my daughter through school and I got into real estate.
- Tell me about your children.
My daughter Zoe is 23 and she's teaching English in Malaysia on a Fulbright scholarship after graduating from Wheaton College. Sid is 21 and he's a very talented artist and he works as a baker and at the ski basin in Bozeman, Montana.
- Who did you start with in real estate?
Wally Sargent, Santa Fe Properties. I was there for four or five years then I wanted to hang my own shingle.
- Do you work with both buyers and sellers in your business?
Yes. I like working with sellers and meeting people but my favorite part of the business is working with buyers. I love fitting the house to the person.
What I really want to do is green renovations. One of my ideas is that I want to renovate my house and wrap it in straw bales. Also I see so many homes getting older and I'd love to see them taken care of. I'd like to be in on developing a plan to retrofit homes that would make them completely self-sufficient. We are such a model for the country in so many ways but we have to get a little militant here about water catchment with all these homes that are going up. If it were well-thought out we could have affordable homes that were more sustainable, but it seems like everybody's in such a hurry.
- What do you enjoy in your spare time?
I always loved hiking in the mountains with my kids, and I do that as often as I can. I also practice Dahn yoga. I've belonged to a book-discussion group for 27 years. I just went to Venice with a friend for Carnivale and we went to Gruyere, Switzerland, where the Giger Museum is located in this medieval hill town.Giger created the monster for the movie ALIEN.The Giger Bar is there too, and it's completely surreal, with spines for seats and incredible sculptures.
- Do you have any involvements you want to mention?
I am a member of the Independent Broker Network. If the IBN were an office I'm pretty sure it would be the fourth largest real-estate office in Santa Fe. We're a group of about 60 brokers who work cooperatively but independently. We help each other. It's really a good support system. I was on the advisory committee to the Creative Writing Department at the College of Santa Fe and I've been on the board of Literacy Volunteers for many years. I'm hoping to get involved with the development committee for Warehouse 21. We have such an amazing group of teenagers here in Santa Fe and we've got to help them grow. We've got to provide them with tools and education so they can get us out of the mess we've gotten ourselves into environmentally.
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