The place you live shapes how you feel, how you spend your days, who you meet and the life you get to build.
We learned that over three decades of neon, records, a movie, three boys and more than one fresh start. Now we help people find the place where their next chapter happens.
Jeff & Lee Ann
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In 1991 I was 19 and in love with neon. For months I’d been practicing at a neon shop on scrap glass, trying to get good enough to do it for a living.
Then my dad took me to breakfast and said he had good news and bad news. He’d found me a job bending neon. I was thrilled. Then I asked about the bad news.
“It’s in Vegas.”
I said, “What’s the bad news?” My family has been laughing about that one ever since.
I moved from Orlando to Las Vegas alone, rented a studio apartment and learned the trade. I’m a third-generation sign guy. I worked in neon for close to 20 years, and I still make it today.
That’s a big part of why Las Vegas has always felt like home to me. Like New York, it’s a city full of people from everywhere.
A few years later I was back in Florida, making neon at a shop alongside Lee Ann’s brother.
I knew Lee Ann’s whole family before I knew her. Her brother and I made neon together, and her family decided the two of us should meet.
Our first date was on a Saturday. By the next Friday we’d been out three more times. We moved in together three months later. We were married the year after that, and that was more than 30 years ago.
Lee AnnMy dad was an artist. He gave free art lessons to children, and my parents welcomed two teenagers into our home who became part of our family. They treated everyone with kindness, as equals, and I grew up watching them live that. I paint too, and I’ve tried to treat people the way my parents did.
We had three boys, and I stayed home with them while they were growing up. Those boys are grown men now, and they’re what I’m proudest of.
LED signs started killing the neon trade. By 2004, Las Vegas was one of the last places I could still make a good living bending glass, so we packed up the boys and moved west.
Lee AnnI had never been to the West Coast, let alone Vegas. We made the move anyway.
We drove in on I-15 in August. The thermometer in the car said about 115 degrees, and there was the Strip, the biggest thing I’d ever seen. After Florida humidity, the dry heat didn’t feel so bad. I fell in love with the desert and with Las Vegas that day.
I waited until the boys were old enough, and in February 2006 I got my real estate license.
JeffI was burning out on neon, and Lee Ann made real estate look like so much fun. My dad’s best friend was a broker, so it had always interested me. I got my license that October.
We’ve worked side by side ever since. Lee Ann calls herself the yin to my yang, and she’s right. We have different strengths, and every client gets both.
Bending neon, writing songs, making records and making a movie all take the same thing. You picture something that does not exist yet, and then you go make it. That is how I work a deal. Buying or selling a home rarely goes perfectly, and when the first plan stops working I go build the next one.
I’m the rules-and-documents person. I make sure the i’s are dotted, the t’s are crossed and the broker has every page they need. Most important, I make sure you understand what you’re signing before you sign it. When a deal hits a problem, I look for the solution that can work for everybody.
Real estate runs seven days a week. With two of us, one can nearly always pick up the phone.
Music has run alongside everything else in our lives. Lee Ann and I have played, recorded and toured together, and we lived in Nashville for a couple of years.
I got hooked on mixing by watching recording videos. One of them was Bob Clearmountain in his home studio, breaking down his mix of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” Bob also mixed the Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You. I watched every video of him I could find.
We recorded an album at Sonic Ranch, a studio on a 1,700-acre pecan farm on the Rio Grande outside El Paso, with our dear friend Aaron Lee Tasjan, a Grammy-nominated artist. One song didn’t make the record. It was still a good song.
So I sent a cold email to Bob’s manager and asked whether Bob would like a custom neon sign for his second studio. To the manager’s surprise, Bob loved the idea.
I made him two signs for Apogee Studio in Santa Monica, inside the company he owns with his wife, where they record and host live shows. We drove them out to California, and Bob invited us to his home studio to hear his mix of our song.
I was sitting in the room from the Springsteen video.
That put me one degree from the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, two of my all-time favorites. And Bob turned out to be the sweetest guy on the planet.
Our last album, Lost Vegas Hiway, was mixed by Eddie Spear, a friend of a friend. When Eddie mixed our record, he hadn’t won a Grammy yet. He’d worked on Chris Stapleton’s Traveller, and the box from producer Dave Cobb’s Grammy was sitting in the window of his garage. Later Eddie won his own, for his work on Brandi Carlile’s By the Way, I Forgive You.
I once spent two days driving a client around to look at $2 million homes. He turned out to be a con man on the run from police in Maricopa County.
Those two days in the car got me writing stories about down-and-out people living at a dive hotel. One music video turned into three. Three turned into an hour-long film called Lost Vegas Hiway, and it ran on Amazon Prime for close to eight years.
We’ve made a lot of things together. We’re proud we started that one and finished it.
We did the same with our book, Roadmap to Your First Home. Buying a first home can be overwhelming, so we wrote the step-by-step guide we wish every first-time buyer had.
See the bookBeing a granny is definitely my superpower. Real estate gives me the flexibility to live that. I can have a morning playdate with the grandkids, and Jeff and I get to take them to the park.
That’s what we mean when we say where you live makes life better. You feel it every day when a home stops fitting your life: not enough room or light, nowhere that feels like yours. Finding the right place, and making it yours, changes how every day feels.
My favorite moment is watching clients get their keys, especially people who worked hard, saved for their down payment and did everything they needed to do to make it happen.Lee Ann
Mine usually comes years later. Around Thanksgiving I’ll see a former client’s post on Facebook: their family sitting around the table in the home they bought. I remember when that house was empty and belonged to somebody else. That photo is why we do this.Jeff
We’ve moved across the country, started over and taken leaps of faith. Whether you’re moving across town or across the country, we’d love to help you find the place where your next story begins.
REALTOR® · Nevada License S.0074457
“If you remember two things about working with us, I hope it’s that we worked hard and we were honest.”
Call JeffREALTOR® · Nevada License BS.0143453
“I hope people feel warmth and sincerity when they work with us.”
Call Lee Ann