NO BULL I HAVE BEEN A LICENSED REAL ESTATE BROKER FOR OVER 33 YEARS... 1972 GRADUATE OF TEXAS A&M... RESIDENT OF KARNES COUNTY, TEXAS, SINCE 1975... REAL ESTATE OFFICE LOCATED AT MY RANCH IN WESTERN KARNES COUNTY,TEXAS. SOLD A LOT OF PLACES IN THE LAST 33 YEARS FROM SONORA TO ARANSAS PASS...I SOLD RANCHES IN THE KERRVILLE AREA FOR THE UNHEARD OF PRICE OF $300/AC.(people thought that was high priced) that was in 1973..times and land prices have changed. FOR CONVERSATION SAKE I AM A REAL ESTATE BROKER,RANCHER, OIL, GAS & URANIUM DEVELOPER, AND MOST OF ALL HUSBAND AND FATHER AND MEMBER IN GOOD STANDING OF LOCAL 484 IA STUDIO MECHANICS UNION AND HAVE DONE OVER 20 FEATURE FILMS, MOVIES OF THE WEEK, TELEVISION SERIES, TV COMMERCIALS...
.. selling or buying farm and ranch land is like going to a doctor, you want the best opinion and the fastest safest cure available.. if you have a heart problem you wouldn't think of visiting a proctologist same is true with buying or selling a farm you need someone that knows the difference between a cow and a bull.. know that the commission will not be more than 6% of the gross sales price...you can count on us to sell your place in a quick and timely manner..... without problems Thanks for visiting my real estate webpage.....Below are a couple of Newspaper Articles written about my Real Estate sales adventures
San Antonio Express-News
San Antonio Express-News (TX)
June 5, 2004
Tales aren't just in the naked city
some are on the naked ranch
Author: Cary Clack
Section: Metro / South Texas
They call me Sleuth. C.C. Sleuth.
There are a million stories in the naked city, but the one story on my mind was a naked ranch.
I was sitting in my dingy, one-light-bulb office just north of downtown, eating pineapple chunks out of a can and washing them down with cheap Scotch while wishing for a horse's life.
Smarty Jones, the great racehorse, gets to run fast for a living, make millions of dollars and then retires to stud and make even more millions.
And he's only 3 years old.
I, on the other hand, was a burned-out and sunburned private eye who'd gone broke blowing my money on fast women and slow horses and now was looking for some aloe vera.
I'd stayed out in the sun too long. Like an outgoing CIA director, I didn't have a clue.
The phone rang and it was Raspy Voice on the other end.
"Sleuth, what's up with the nudist ranch?"
"What nudist ranch?"
"Check out the classifieds, Sleuth. There's a couple grand if you look into it. We've got to nip this in the bud. We can't allow this to spread. Think of some of the people you know. Do you really want to see them nude?"
"I'll check it out. Say, you wouldn't happen to have any aloe vera, would you?"
"Aloe vera? No. Why?"
"Sunburn."
"But Sleuth, you're black."
"I'm also part Irish. I burned my Irish side of the family. I seriously overestimated the amount of melanin in my skin."
"There you go talking about race again."
I got off the phone, picked up the paper and found the ad that Raspy was referring to. It had been running for a few days and read, "Nudist Ranch Listed." It boasted of "great views, big hardwood trees, big bucks, wild hogs, squirrels and waterwell. It won't cost you the shirt off your back."
But in parenthesis was this: (typo: ad should read newest ranch.)
I picked up the phone to call the real estate agent, David M. Phillip, a 1972 Texas A&M graduate.
As I'd suspected, the catch was in the parenthesis. The ranch itself is legit and for sale at $1,650 an acre, but it's not a nudist ranch.
"It's whatever you want to make it," said Phillip, who's been selling real estate for 32 years.
He says that the ranch, located two miles outside of Karnes City toward Helena, has a "great view of the San Antonio River bottom."
So far, Phillip has received about three dozen calls about the ranch, including one from "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
"A lot of people just want to 'take a look,'" says Phillip, who also is a stage mechanic who has worked on 17 movies including, "Selena," "Courage Under Fire," and "Black Knight."
Many of the inquiries from people who only wanted to 'take a look' have come from women. Some of the messages on his voice mail are from people who can't bring themselves to say "nudist" and go like this, "I'm calling about, ah, ah, ah, ah, those 77 acres. Call me back please."
Phillip says that the Wilson County newspaper canceled the ad, telling him, "We're pulling your ad because it's too suggestive for our newspaper."
There a million stories in the naked city but if you want a ranch full of naked people in Karnes City, you're going to have to cough up more than $120 grand.
And if you do, please have some aloe vera on hand.
To contact Cary Clack, call (210) 250-3546 or e-mail cclack@express-news.net. His column appears on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.
Copyright 2004 San Antonio Express-News
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Victoria Advocate, The (TX)
Victoria Advocate, The (TX)
August 3, 2005
Real estate broker with a funny bone
Author: MARSHA MOULDER Victoria Advocate
Anyone who has read the farm and ranch land section in the Victoria Advocate classifieds has no doubt wondered who the guy is behind those wacky ads.
He's the guy who made a Hondo ranch look like an African jungle for the movie "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls," starring Jim Carrey; who made the Poteet Strawberry Festival look like Monterrey, Mexico, for a scene in the movie "Selena," starring Jennifer Lopez; and who helped build a castle in Willington, N.C., for the movie "Black Knight," starring Martin Lawrence.
David Martin Phillip of Karnes County never works on more than one film, or TV miniseries a year. The rest of the time he uses his creative bent to pen the classified ads that he runs as a real estate broker specializing in farm and ranch land.
Vance Runnels of Hondo who reads farm and ranch land ads regularly, said, "David Martin Phillip is the most humorous real estate agent I know. I like to keep track of what's being offered, and he's got the most unique classified ads I've ever seen."
Phillip, a 1972 graduate of Texas A&M University, and a resident of Karnes County since 1975 when he bought 200 acres there, has been a licensed real estate broker for more than 30 years.
With a degree in recreation and parks planning and design, Phillip went to work for a big country club outside of Kerrville.
"They needed someone who knew how to play tennis and could take care of wild animals," he said. "I fit right in there."
Eventually, the place changed hands, and Phillip's new employer wanted to make the place exclusive, selling only 100 memberships for $100,000 each. That was in 1973.
"They brought in all of Texas' elite. That's how I got into real estate. People I met there said I ought to get a broker's license, so I did in 1974," Phillip said.
Through the years, Phillip was also involved in oil and uranium development. Uranium is what brought him to Karnes County.
Among the other movies on which Phillip has worked, either as a greensman, a member of the crew who procures places, and maintains any vegetation on a set; or a set director, include "The Life of David Gale," "All the Pretty Horses," "Courage Under Fire," "Pearl Harbor" and "American Outlaws."
He also worked on episodes of the TV series, "The Sopranos" as a painting coordinator in 1999.
For some of the movies, Phillip provides vintage automobiles. Among those he has worked on include "Secondhand Lions," "The Stars Fell on Henrietta" and "A Perfect World."
Phillip said it was during the filming of "A Perfect World" in San Marcos that Clint Eastwood spotted a Hudson that Phillip owned and wanted to use it in the film. That was in 1993, and the start of Phillip's film industry career.
When focusing on his real estate career, Phillip incorporates creativity in his ads to get them noticed by people outside the area. "You're not going to sell property in South Texas to people in South Texas because they can remember when they could have bought it for $300 an acre," he explained.
Because the Advocate's classified ads are also posted on the Advocate's Web site, Phillip said his real estate ads are competing with the other real estate ads in the Advocate for the attention of people from other states - and even other countries - that are interested in buying property in this area.
Phillip said by making his ads unique, prospective buyers remember them. "Someone will call and say, 'I'm calling about the Elvis ad.'" And Phillip has developed a following. "I have a lot of ladies from Goliad who'll call me wanting to know why I didn't run an ad this week. They just like to read them."
Phillip said he likes to think of his ads as being like the old Burma Shave signs from when he was a boy, traveling with his dad.
Burma Shave, one of the world's first brushless shaving cream manufacturers, was probably as famous for its ad campaign, which included roadside signs, as it was for its product. The signs sprang up all over the country throughout the mid-twentieth century. The signs were often humorous jingles placed at intervals along the road, with each sign showing one line of a four-part rhyme until the last sign concluded the advertising scheme with "Burma-Shave."
An example of a Burma-Shave jingle is: She put a bullet/Through his hat/But he's had closer/Shaves than that/With Burma-Shave.
Phillip said he remembers how eagerly he looked forward to each sign. He likes that people eagerly look forward to his ads.
Royaline Kendall, who lives in Karnes City, said her late mother, who lived in Houston but came to Karnes City to visit, always looked forward to Phillip's ads. "She always loved his crazy advertisements," she said.
"I think he has the funniest ads. David is a very intelligent, humorous person. I grew up in Houston, and now live in Karnes City. Sometimes David is the one person who is so creative, I think there is still life out there," Kendall added.
Because he sells farm and ranch land all over South Texas, Phillip does a lot of traveling, giving him a lot of time to listen to the radio, and this, he said, inspires him creatively and gives him a lot of ideas for his classified ads.
But he has more than a radio for company. When Phillip goes out to inspect a piece of property, he takes 88-year-old Pete Hartman, Karnes County judge for 20 years, with him because Hartman is very familiar with the area.
Phillip is currently in his real estate mode, after having taken time out to work on the recent TNT miniseries, "Into the West."
With a career in film and TV, one has to wonder why Phillip would bother with real estate.
"I love selling farms and ranches," he said, for once keeping it simple.
Marsha Moulder is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact her at 361-580-6504 or vicad.com.
Copyright, (c) 2005, The Victoria Advocate | | |
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