David Hill is the Regional Managing Director of SVN | Saunders Ralston Dantzler Real Estate in Fayetteville, Arkansas. In this episode of In Our Expert Opinion Real Estate Podcast, David sits down with Tyler Davis, ALC to discuss David’s transition into real estate and the unique dynamics of the Arkansas land market. They also dive into some of the firm's future plans for the state, particularly in Northwest Arkansas. David and Tyler emphasize the importance of onboarding local expertise in specialized real estate markets, such as poultry farming and forestry, to effectively meet clients' needs.
Below is an excerpt from the interview. Listen above for the full podcast.
David Hill, Regional Managing Director of SVN | Saunders Ralston Dantzler Real Estate in Fayetteville, Arkansas
What did you do in the oil and gas industry? So I work for a company called NOV (National Oilwell Varco)–they're a big manufacturer–and what I was doing was selling fiberglass production piping. When a landowner drills a well on their property, a lot of the time there's some corrosion, and they need corrosion-resistant piping.
If it wasn't for one of the worst crashes in the oil industry in the past 40 years, that happened back in late 2015 and early 2016, I'd probably still be in that industry. I loved it. It was a lot of fun, but people were getting laid off left and right.
How did you get into sales recruiting? When I joined [Pursuit Sales Solutions], we really only had one client–that client actually had gone through bankruptcy, so things are a little bit on the fritz. I came on board with some prior sales experience, from oil and gas, and a passion for sales and a skill set for it.
It was a true grassroots initiative. We didn't have systems, we didn't have processes, it was just, “Go beat down some doors and try and find us some new clients.” What that looks like is essentially going to medical and/or tech companies and saying, “Hey, you have you have hiring needs, you need sales reps, let us recruit for you.” It was on a contingency basis so we were only getting paid if we were to get somebody hired for them.
Over the course of eight years, we were able to grow the business. At one point we had close to 75 people or so. I was able to build out the team, led the sales team, and kind of created the sales position.
Tyler Davis, ALC, President of SVN | Saunders Ralston Dantzler Real Estate interviews Regional Managing Director of Fayetteville, David Hill, on the In Our Expert Opinion Real Estate Podcast.
Why open an office in Northwest Arkansas? So, we're going to be based in Fayetteville, which is in Northwest Arkansas and it's where the University of Arkansas is. Our office is actually going to be about, probably less than a mile from campus, which I'm really excited about. That quadrant of the state is absolutely booming. That is home.
Northwest Arkansas is home to several very, very large corporations, one of which being Walmart. A unique part of the state is that it's pretty rural, yet there are still three Fortune 500 companies all within like a 20-mile radius. You have Walmart there, you have Tyson Foods, and there's J.B. Hunt.
There's just a lot of money, a lot of high-paying jobs, and I would say, probably since COVID, just the quality of life there is beautiful. Northwest Arkansas is also in the middle of the Ozark Mountains, the cost of living is very low, and people started figuring that out around COVID time, so they've just been moving there in droves–not too dissimilar to Florida.
What kind of land is in Arkansas? There’s big timber there, definitely South Arkansas in general. There's a lot of timber activity in Southwest Arkansas. There's even a lot of oil and gas as well.
Then in East Arkansas, the Mississippi River literally forms the border between Mississippi and Arkansas and Tennessee. All the way down the eastern part of the state is the Mississippi River Delta, and it is prime farmland. So, I don't know if you've ever heard of Stuttgart, Arkansas, but they're known as the “Duck and Rice Capital of the World.” If you like greenheads, that's where you go, there's a massive flyway there. In terms of row crops, there's really no more fertile rice land in the entire country than in the Mississippi River Delta on the eastern part of the state.