ARC Makes Its Mark

ARC Realty Chairman, Tommy Brigham, was featured in the Over the Mountain Journal at the end of July. He talks about assembling the ARC team, our growth since inception and the status of the Birmingham real estate market.

ARC Makes Its Mark

Real Estate Company Is Off to Fast Start

by Keysha Drexel

Journal Editor

As one of the fastest growing real estate companies in the Birmingham metro area celebrates its first 18 months in business, the chairman of the company said he thinks the real estate market in the Over the Mountain area is finally bouncing back from the dark days of the recession.

Tommy Brigham, chairman of ARC Realty Group LLC, said if the flurry of activity at his own business is any indication, the real estate market in the Birmingham metro area is poised for growth.

“The agents are busier and the activity is robust overall.” Brigham said. “Sales activity is much better now than it was this time last year.”

Brigham brought together veteran real estate professionals to form ARC Realty Group in late 2012. He is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Brigham-Williams Realtors and RealtySouth and is the current CEO of ARK Real Estate Strategies.

“I saw the opportunity to assemble veterans into an organization to build a platform that allows for a high-tech kind of environment,” Brigham said. “I wanted to create a culture that provides professional development and embraces how social media is driving the market.”

To that end,, Brigham brought together real estate pros Beau Bevis, Mechelle Wilder and Dale McIntyre to form ARC Realty Group.

Bevis, president and qualifying broker, has been in the business for 16 years and was the youngest managing broker for the area’s largest agency.

Partner and associate broker Wilder has 13 years of real estate experience.

McIntyre merged with ARC Realty, bringing 25 years of real estate experience to his role as partner and associate broker.

Brigham said in the last 18 months, the company has gone from essentially having no employees to having about 126 employees on staff now.

“We have become one of the fastest-growing real estate companies in not only Alabama but in the rest of the country,” Brigham said. “It’s a business model that was needed in real estate, and I think it’s being executed in the way we thought it would. I feel like we’ve created a really competitive edge.”

Brigham said he’s happy that his company has been a part of the recent uptick in the real estate market in the Birmingham metro area. A report recently released by the Birmingham Association of Realtors indicates that more people are buying homes in the Birmingham metro area this year than they were at this time last year.

Brigham said his company has been very busy this year working with clients who are new to the Birmingham area-something he sees as a positive sign for the local real estate market overall.

“We handled 170 relocation referrals this year, so to me, that indicated that there’s some job creation going on and some job movement and hopefully, that will be a continued cycle as we go forward,” he said.

While the market is improving in some areas of the Birmingham metro area, some areas are not faring as well, Brigham said,

“There are pockets of Birmingham where the supply is very limited and the demand is very high, so those prices are getting back to pre-recession numbers, but in other markets where there’s not as much demand, the prices are kind of flat,” he said.

Brigham said he thinks homeowners are ready to sell again and that renters and others who have been holding off on buying are ready to look for homes now.

“But the single biggest difficulty I see is the limitation banks have placed on builders to obtain credit.” he said. “At some point, we’re going to have to see some loosening of credit, and the development of new lots will also have to start taking place again at some point.”