MAKING THIER MARK

Two Boston-area Realtors were honored as part of The Coldwell Banker 30 Under 30, an annual award that celebrates the company’s top young real estate professionals.

Morgan Franklin, a 25-year-old Back Bay-based Coldwell Banker agent, realized early on that a traditional path was not for him. After a short stint in college, he got his real estate license at 19 and hasn’t looked back. “I knew I wanted to get into the luxury sales market,” says Franklin, who grew up in the South End of Boston, “and I put myself into the position where I really had to succeed.”

Starting out so young was a big motivator for him. “I was trying to navigate the waters of starting a business in a luxury market where I’m going up to bat against heavy hitters that have been in the industry for 30 years.”

Crediting input from mentors such as his father and his branch manager, Ken Tutunjian, Franklin has worked to absorb everything about his industry. “I listened more than I talked, and I paid attention to how to cultivate relationships.”

Despite veering away from formal education, Franklin has committed to lifelong learning. “I’m very autodidactic,” he says. When he was starting out, he “would just burn through sales and real estate books” and began creating the regular work habits that have defined his career thus far.

Franklin keeps a rigorous workout schedule and commits to making 50 sales calls a day. “I started my business by cold calling,” he says. “For the first eight months, I didn’t get anywhere but then all of a sudden, a year and a half into it, I’d done five million in sales. You can’t reach goals without having a plan to execute on a daily basis.”

His background worked in his favor when, shortly after joining Coldwell Banker in early 2020, Covid -19 upended traditional ways of doing business. “It was a devastating time in the city, obviously, but I was able to find a niche during the pandemic,” he says, reflecting on how in the spring of 2020, many buyers were seeking homes in the suburbs rather than in the city. “Having grown up here, I knew Boston would come back. I thought it was my chance to double down on the city.”

One of the ways he stood out was through immersive digital marketing. “We wanted to do something entirely different from the typical 3-D tour,” says Franklin. His innovative lifestyle videos take the best aspects of a property and incorporate them into visual storytelling. “If a condo has a beautiful deck with amazing city views, for example, we will have a couple of actors enjoying a glass of wine out there with the sun setting behind them. It is essentially a movie trailer for a home.”

In embracing the creativity required to sell homes during a worldwide pandemic, Franklin recalled wise words from his father. “He reminded me that this is such an emotional process for buyers and sellers, so tapping into those aspects is incredibly important. It’s not just numbers on a piece of paper; it’s real people and their stories.”

Franklin is thrilled to be given a 30 Under 30 award, especially since it is an international award. “It is a great accomplishment,” he says. “I’m very honored.” But what inspires him the most is continuing to interact with his clients and his city. “Boston has so much vibrancy,” he says. “It’s an international city, but it’s also a very small town, so you need to be part of the community,” Franklin says he will continue to do what has worked to date. “Every day, I connect with people and build relationships,” he says. “I’m focused on providing really good value to my clients.”

As a third-generation Realtor, Katelyn Sullivan has been essentially learning her trade since childhood. “My grandmother was a Realtor in the 60s and 70s, and my mom is still an active Realtor with Coldwell Banker, so I always thought one day I would join real estate,” says Sullivan, who imagined she would have a corporate background before joining the family industry.

Instead, after getting a finance degree from Penn State, Sullivan embraced the digital nomad lifestyle, spending two and half years traveling the world and working remotely doing a mix of online English teaching, freelance marketing, and social media content creation. By 2020, when others began remote work in earnest, Sullivan was, ironically, ready to settle back in Massachusetts. “I had been doing my mom’s marketing for a couple of years, but now real estate required virtual showings,” she says. “So I began helping her figure out how to display listings and assist buyers in a completely digital market.”

She hadn’t expected to transition to real estate so soon, but getting her own license made sense, and she joined her mother at the Framingham Coldwell Banker office later that summer. Sullivan, who is 27, quickly found a “really great niche” with first-time buyers in Metro West and the Greater Boston area. “I definitely leveraged my network of people from my hometown of Framingham,” says Sullivan, “and having a strong digital marketing background and social media outreach is really helpful.”

Her years of traveling have also paid dividends. “I've been to 41 different countries, so I feel I have a really good knack for walking in other people's shoes.” While abroad, Sullivan lived in Spain and various countries in Central and South America and is now reasonably fluent in Spanish, allowing her to work with Spanishspeaking buyers and sellers. “I welcome all types of clients from all walks of life,” she says. “I really feel like I'm a diversity advocate. I'm creative and welcoming and approachable, so I think that has really helped people gravitate toward me, no matter what their situation is.”

Sullivan now lives in a condo in Boston and has extended her real estate reach to the downtown market as well as the suburbs. “Buying a house, no matter where you are, can be daunting,” she says, “so I think my welcoming nature has helped people flock to me and want my help.”

Every client’s needs are different, she says, but there is always a special feeling when she hands over the keys to a buyer’s very first home. “It’s really rewarding,” says Sullivan. “The fact that someone is willing to trust me with their biggest investment is humbling, and I’m always filled with gratitude to be part of their next chapter of life.”

Sullivan says that when she joined her mother as a real estate agent in 2020, she told her that she was making it a goal to get a 30 Under 30 award. “I thought I probably wouldn’t make it since it is a global award with lots of competition,” she says. “Winning made me feel really proud and excited to keep growing and helping people buy and sell their homes.”

She jokes that selling real estate is just like the sightseeing from her old travel life. “Every house is different. Every living space is a new discovery,” she says. She also appreciates the combination of her youthful energy and her mother’s four decades of experience. “I love utilizing my millennial creative flair as well as leveraging my mother's 38 years of veteran real estate knowledge,” she says. “ I’m young, but I am mighty!”