MARLENE MAXON

It’s been said that the harder you work, the luckier you get. And no one knows that better than Marlene Maxon. After a successful 25-year career in marketing working for corporate America, Marlene jumped into real estate with RE/MAX Alliance in Colorado in 2008--when the real estate market was terrible. She started out working door to door pursuing outlier opportunities in stress and foreclosures on behalf of a bank. Soon the other agents in her office started giving her the difficult sales that they didn’t want to spend time on.

While the incubation process to complete a real estate transaction is typically 30-45 days, the stress sales that Marlene worked on early in her career took much longer. “The longest one took two years. A lot of work, but I just dug the ditch,” she says. Whether she’s working with a buyer or seller, she goes out of her way to take the time to set realistic expectations regarding the process. And as it turned out, there was a silver lining to all those time-consuming sales. Once her clients were doing better financially, her phone began to ring—and it hasn’t stopped since. “After working so closely with people at such a painful point in their lives, many of them almost became family. Within two years, I had a strong and solid customer base.”

A proud member of the RE/MAX Chairman Club and an expert in the Colorado real estate market, Marlene is now consistently recognized in the top 1% of the industry and has been featured as a professional “Five Star Real Estate Agent” in 5280 Magazine five years running. She has also been recognized as Real Trends top 1000, and this year she’s on track to complete at least 40 sales. But she’s quick to credit Annie, the assistant she calls her “right arm,” along with her fellow real estate agents, as major contributors to her success. Last year, when her husband tragically passed away from brain cancer, her fellow agents stepped in. “The real estate community came out of the woodwork to help me. I’m incredibly indebted to them. It really makes you look at everything in perspective. So many people in this business are amazing human beings.”

Marlene donates a portion of every commission she makes to the Children’s Miracle Network. In fact, in 2021 she was the top contributor for all of RE/MAX Alliance. In honor of her late father--a proud WWII pilot and her biggest fan-she’s an avid supporter of the Wounded Warriors Project. In her free time, she enjoys spending time and traveling with her family, especially her grandchildren. She also rides horses whenever she can.

As she looks ahead, Marlene is keenly aware of what her priorities are and what’s really important in life: her relationships. “At this point, it is quality vs. quantity for me. So many of my clients are my friends. I just want to continue to work with the people who appreciate and know me. One of my mottos is ‘slow down before you speed up.’” At the same time, she still loves the experience of helping a buyer find their dream home. “Right now, I have a luxury home buyer and a first-buyer, and they’re both equally exciting. It just makes you feel good to do something good for somebody else.”