How it all began!

We are Ashley and Tracy Hammons. Our background is steeped with all the experience necessary to facilitate any need you may have regarding real estate. From traditional property purchases and sells and rental property management to maintaining your home or property or even investing in real estate!

Ashley was raised in Phoenix Arizona by a family of real estate investors. Her mother was an active real estate broker during Ashley's youth and is where she learned to love showing homes and negotiating hard to close deals. She spent many hours of her early life in home improvement stores, flip projects, rentals and the real estate office. She has a funny story she would love to tell you about helping her Dad pull bushes out with a Case Loader at a flip house and they ripped the bumper off the tractor! We learned the hard way so you dont have to!

Tracy was born and raised in North East Texas. Although his family wasn't in real estate, they instilled into him a strong work ethic, a problem solver attitude and a do it yourself spirit. Partialy because of a very humble upbringing and also a strong curiosity for how things work, Tracy learned hour to fix things around the house at a very early age. Some of his earliest memories working around the house are of him, his dad, and his grandfather working on the water well that supplied water to 3 family homes. 

Ashley and Tracy both graduated with Bachelors degrees from Texas A&M Commerce. Tracy had been watching Ashley's passion for real estate since she moved to Texas in 2008, and it didn't take much encouragement to convince her to get a real estate license and follow her dream. In turn she dragged him straight in to an investment project in 2009, the same year they married! The way Tracy tells it, he didnt know anything about real estate when he met Ashley execpt the fact that he likes to sleep inside!

But we know that cannot be completely true, because Tracy took his first property maintenance job in 2003 and was working as a maintenance man at an apartment complex where Ashely and Tracy met through one of Ashley's friends who had moved to the area to attend A&M Commerce. Tracy has been involved in property maintenance in one way or another ever since. Even while he was an Engineer at a local manufacturing company he was still responsible for walking through flips and advising on larger maintenance projects for their rentals.

After their first flip to hold project, which is a great story you can find here, it gave Tracy the confidence to be willing to try it again. Over the next five years Ashley pushed, and Tracy obliged, as they built a rental portfolio of over 20 homes, and a real estate business portfolio that earned over 1 million dollars in income in just 9 short years.

Ashley got her Texas real estate license in 2010 and went to work for broker Chris Childress at Freedom Real Estate. There she found quick success by putting her passion to work for others and Chris showed her what it looks like to support and mentor agents. She will always be grateful for the oppertunity and education that Chris provided her. It was at Freedom Real Estate that Ashley convinced her best friend Sarah to join her on a Real Estate journey.

In 2015 Ashley earned her Brokers license just after giving birth to their oldest child, a daughter. Although she inquired about a franchise with Freedom it was ultimately mutually decided that she should venture out on her own to open her own office. AT Home Texas Real Estate was born. Sarah joined Ashley at the new brokerage  and a ribbon cutting was held on DATE to mark the office's official opening in Greenville Texas. With Ashley's intuitive business sense and strong sentiment for real estate, AT Home Texas Real Estate was an instant success.

Just over a year later Ashley had recruited 10 more agents, her and Tracy had 6 constructions projects going simultaneously, and they closed on a rental portfolio of 9 homes with a partner. It was then, with an understanding amount of excitement and fear of what was to come,  that Tracy gave notice to leave his career in engineering and join Ashley at AT Home Texas Real Estate. His goal was to take on all the construction projects, maintenance, and back office administration to allow Ashley to focus on “being the amazing broker we all know she is!”

It didn’t take long with Ashley and Tracy working as a full time team to build AT Home Texas Real Estate to a place where more administrative staff was needed. First was an office manager, followed shortly by an on staff maintenance man and a full time receptionist. Then the day came that they realized they needed help managing all the rental properties they were accumulating. Tracy said to Ashley “If we are going to hire someone to help us with our rentals, we are going to offer property management services to the public.” This marked the begining of a brand new venture - Simply Rentals. Ashley and Tracy had no idea how well recieved their method of property management would be… Managing a management company from the standpoint of a property owner seemed rather simple to them, but the concept was fresh for the market and took off quickly.

In 2015, AT Home Texas Real Estate began in half of a small commercial rental building on Stonewall St. in Greenville and in 2016 blew the wall out and took over the whole building. By 2017 Ashley and Tracy were looking for a new space to call their own. Ashley really wanted a Wesley Street address for her growing business, but Tracy really wasnt excited about turning left out of any business on that busy street. After a lot of looking, almost making an offer on a building just off Wesley, Tracy asked Ashley to take a second look at a building they had already passed on. Convinced the amount of space was right, the area had sufficient and growing traffic, and the price was in budget they made an offer to purchase the property at 7902 Traders Circle in Greenvnille, the site they now occupy as the AT Home Texas Real Estate Headquarters.

This building was built in 1984 with raised oak paneling throughout, troughed ceilings and plaster crown molding. It didn't exactly exude “up and coming real estate entrepreneurs”.  So Ashley and Tracy made a classic office space using some raised oak paneling as wainscoting for their friend Robert Bledsoe - Farmers Insurance Agent in one end of the building and completely blew the rest of the space down to the studs. From there they created a unique collaborative space with real estate education as their center focal point in the design. From the time the office opened in August 2018 until the present day people always remark about the unique and effective elements of the office's design.