We were lucky to catch up with EVa Norton recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, EVa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

Honestly, I got into Real Estate after I realized that something was different about my son. This was before he got his official diagnosis of Non Verbal with Severe Autism and Global Learning Delays. I was working as a field biologist for a large environmental company, monitoring research studies around windmill sites throughout the Midwest. It hit me that I needed to find something where I was home more, with a flexible schedule AND something where I could make a whole lot of money. Wildlife Biology has always been my passion, but it doesn’t really pay all that great. My son was only two – but I knew that he would need a lot of help and I had no idea if insurance would cover any of it.

My personal legacy – is that I want to leave a real estate empire for my children, and for their children. When I’m gone, I want to know that my older son Barrett specifically, will always be okay, He will be taken care of, and not in a government home. I don’t know if he will ever be able to live on his own, and that’s okay as my husband and I love him more than breathing. My legacy is leaving behind a passive income large enough to support all my children so that they can live the lives they choose, and my son Barrett will always have the care and the support he needs.

I also would like to be remembered for making my town, Warrensburg, a more beautiful and wonderful place. My husband and I intentionally buy the worst houses in town, the ones that are floor to ceiling garbage, falling down and infested with everything you an think of. We take on these house and clear them out, gut them, fix their foundations and their walls and bring them back to life. We are trying to do our little part to beautify our town, one house at a time. I’d like to be remembered for bringing beauty to our home.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My husband and I started a real estate company called the the Next Door Agents here in Warrensburg, MO. We realized that though we are under an amazing brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) we wanted to make ourselves stand out and open a branch of our brokerage up here in town. We also realized that there was a niche to fill – Warrensburg is right next to Whiteman Airforce base, and we also have the University of Central Missouri. So we have people coming here from all over the world, to both the university and the Airforce base, and there was nothing online about our town. That’s where the idea for the You Tube page – Living in Warrensburg, MO – came about. I started making videos on everything that I would want to know about a town from the viewpoint of a wife, a mother or just a person needing to move to a town sight unseen. I talk about the housing market and neighborhoods, subdivisions that are good and not so good, Basic real estate related information. I ALSO talk about things like pro’s and con’s of moving here (no Target in town is the worst con lol) what families need to know before they come (if you want to get your child into a daycare there’s 3-6 month waiting lists so get on asap!) and I walk through restaurants, small businesses and places like the Warrensburg Community Center – to give families an idea of activities and the community we have :) I do one video a week and I love it!

Because of this, and my dedication to hard work, I sold 28 million dollars in Real Estate my first year.

Instead of spend this money on a fancy new car, or a bunch of awesome vacations (sigh lol) my husband and I have put this money directly back into the community. We started buying ugly horrible houses around town. And I do mean horrible. We have bought the worst wrecks in downtown Warrensburg, The old houses that are full of trash and infested with everything imaginable and are falling down – those are the ones we wanted because those were the ones that would make the biggest difference to the look and feel of the community as a whole. We have cleaned them up, fixed them (from the foundation up) and made them safe and beautiful additions to the town. All without tearing them down and building new (we wanted to save the history of this town). We are on property number 4 and its been a wild ride so far. One house took 28 dumpsters to clean out and we found an old well under a back bedroom (and so many other interesting and super gross things. We don’t sell our houses, we rent them to college students or military families mainly. That’s part of that legacy I was talking about earlier. Building passive income for our kids.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I met my husband and business partner in the gym actually. I was going through a rough divorce, was a single mom with two kids, one of whom was special needs and I was practically homeless (as I couldn’t afford my house payment by myself and hadn’t been working for over a year due to my son’s needs). I had just finished my real estate class and took my exam and my (now) husband reached out to me saying he was a real estate agent, a retired Air Force pilot, and had heard from someone in the grocery store (yes this is a small town haha) that I was looking for a place to hang my license, He gave me his number and said that he was not hitting on me, but that if I wanted to talk to someone who had been very successful in real estate (he built up the most successful brokerage in town and then sold it during Covid) he was looking for someone to come work with him that he could train and partner with to create something new. I called him a week later.

We met and talked and I decided to throw caution to the wind and take a leap of faith. He asked me out to dinner a month later to talk about my first contract and I responded yes with no hesitation, except I said I didn’t want to talk business, if this was a date I wanted it to be a date. That was the one and only time I’ve ever seen my husband blush. Here we are married two years later with an incredibly successful business and I am incredibly thankful to that person in the grocery store.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I first started my You Tube page, I got made fun of, LOUDLY and to my face by other agents in town, specifically the agents who had been in the business forever. I got told I had no idea what I was doing, that I was just an empty-headed pretty face and a pair of bosoms (yes that words was actually used haha) and that I would give-up within 6 months. I got quite a bit of rudeness from other agents, especially if I made a mistake on a form in the beginning with some of my earlier contracts, and I was basically this town joke.

But you know, I’ve been in a field that wasn’t the most welcoming before. I have a Bachelors and Masters degree in Biology – and I specialize primarily in Herpetology (the study of reptiles and amphibians) and let me tell you, when I started that was not a female field. I have thick skin and I am not scared off from things easily.

Hearing the jokes just made me work harder. I have made a video a week on my You Tube page for over a year now – I’m up to 76 videos and on track to match and then beat my 28 million in sales of last year – open a new office, hire a full -time assistant and take on new agents by October. People aren’t laughing anymore. Never give up. Hard work pays off.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.warrensburglife.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LivingInWarrensburg
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@WarrensburgMissouri

Image Credits
Angelica Page