After decades of being led exclusively by women, Connecticut’s first female-owned real estate brokerage, Seabury-Hill Realtors, has new leadership – and that is a responsibility Jack Hill does not take lightly. While Mable Seabury started the company nearly a century ago – and Hill’s mother ran it from the 1980s until this year – Hill is moving Seabury- Hill forward with new goals in mind… as one of the top real estate agents across all of Connecticut.

Hill has always known his destiny lay in local real estate – he first tried for his license when he was just eighteen years old. With the early attempt came some growing pains; it took a while for him to secure the certification. He says there were other interests that cropped up in the interim – he has a degree in political science from UConn – but he never wavered from his goal. At twenty-two, he had his license and a hunger to enter a hot real estate market at the perfect time.

With youth, however, came concerns of inexperience.

In 2002, Hill was a young realtor, fresh out of college. No one would trust him with sales with such little work under his belt, he says, so at twenty-three he carved out a niche in rentals. Through relentless dedication and long hours at the office, Hill found that agents from other companies would give him rental clients. After a while, though, the other shoe dropped for the other agents: Hill developed relationships with renters, inspiring them to come back to him when they were ready to buy. With his annual rentals climbing into the hundreds – a step into sales was next.

Fast forward to the present: Hill is the top selling New Haven agent, and Seabury-Hill is the #1 Office in New Haven for sales and rentals. Last year, Hill sold the most multi-family properties  by volume in the state.  He has taken  young agents under his wing, offering them the advice he discovered for himself. Hill says it starts with one house, then two, and three, and so on – he emphasizes that newer agents need to prove themselves before they can get the listings. He focuses on slow, organic growth, without rushing to be the best agent in the region. Hill himself has built a loyal clientele through years of dedicated service and referrals.

A favorite example of Hill’s – a Yale medical student found a local apartment for $600 a month. The same student came back to Hill to buy his first condominium - $150,000. He graduated, met his wife, and bought a house - $300,000. Five years later, $800,000 for another house. Just recently, that couple bought yet another new house for $2 million – with Hill intimately involved in each transaction. It is that level of commitment to the work and the relationships that keeps people coming back for more – and that has Hill leading the way among male realtors in his market.

While it’s new for a man to be the Broker / Owner at Seabury- Hill, women are still heavily involved in Jack Hill’s operation – his wife runs the rental side of the agency (still working in triple digits each year), his sister is an agent, and there are many top female agents at Seabury-Hill. And with two daughters of his own – the legacy of Hill family women in Connecticut real estate may not be over just yet.