About

Born and raised on the South Shore in Massachusetts, Chad Church was brought up with a moral calibre that is often missing from the type of interaction many younger professionals exhibit these days.

His biggest pet peeves are around person to person, or agent to agent communications. Ask nim, and he’s likely to tell you he’s proud of the reality that he picks up his phone a verified 87 percent of the time, and typically calls people back within an hour if one leaves a message.

For Chad, it’s all about clear, responsible, and respectful communication between clients and colleagues. He may find himself committed in this way even more so because of his course of study at Eastern New Mexico University in the late 80’s and early 90’s, where he majored in Communications  and Broadcast Journalism.

In 1993, after graduation ceremonies, he hopped in his old Audi 5000 and drove to Alaska to go to work in a fishing canary. He had caught the travel bug having gone to school so far away from home. But like most, after his summer in Alaska, he realized it was time to find a place to settle down, and go to work, creating an adult life for himself. Initially, he worked in print publishing for a small chain of local newspapers in the Denver area. He fell in love with Denver, during many trips back and forth from college with his friends who lived there. It was “The Big City,” to him, and with it’s home town atmosphere, it just felt like the perfect place to land.

Chad had always been interested in real estate, so when the newspaper’s Publisher announced a year or two  later that 20 percent of the staff was being laid off, a month after he had purchased his first home, Chad decided with his short lived media career door closed, he would allow that timing to open a new window for him in the real estate profession, as he slowly worked on his own home as a weekend warrior, completing renovations to it himself. At the time, he knew nothing about renovations, but knew what he liked, and just got down to learning what to do and how to do it, far before YouTube was there to guide him.

Chad made the neighborhood in which he purchased, his farm area for real estate business. He started out working with rental property investors in the City Park Neighborhood, which was a neighborhood going through significant urban renewal. This eventually opened a new door for him, working with investors who were renovating the plethora of Turn of The Century homes. He continued to learn mor about home renovations, while his presence and marketing also brought him recognition with buyers and sellers in the neighborhood.

Within about 5 years, his signs could be found peppering the neighborhood, and he had become known as the City Park expert. He had become a well known, top producer in the Denver real estate market.

Chad continued to work in the Denver market until 2005, when the travel bug caught him for the third time. After a trip to England, and the Czech Republic, he made the decision to pull up his roots, and focus on what his passion was in his earlier days; writing. In the late fall of 2005, Chad sold his second home he had purchased and renovated two years earlier. Prague was fun for a little while, but he then decided to leave, and move to Recifie, Brasil, where he lived for a year.

One can’t just travel around the world burning through hard earned money for too long, so the following year, Chad came back to the states, and got back into real estate.

This time, he had studied some other markets like New Orleans, LA., Austin, TX. and Raleigh – Durham, NC. Chad landed in the Raleigh Durham area, and did a few fix and flips there, while that area was going through it’s own revival. Though in 2007, when the market came to a screeching halt, Chad moved to Pittsburgh, after studying the market here for about a year. He saw the potential for secure, yet sound growth in a market that was not likely to bubble and then burst.

Since 2007, Chad, with intermittent breaks for his love of world travel, now having traveled to 59 different countries, he has been an active, and top producing agent, seasoned in not only investment property, renovations, and regular retail sales, he is one of the most adept REO – Foreclosure agents in the area! While REO listings are no longer a focus of his business, he realized what is missing in that section of the business, is seasoned buyer representation in this niche. Many agents just don’t know what to expect, what is required, or how to bring an REO transaction to a successful conclusion. This being the case, and having solid relations with the biggest REO listing agents in the area, Church knows how to get his investor clients what they want… if they listen to him and take his expert direction through the process.

Chad says, “Listen. I have sold a $400 house that amounted to four walls and half a roof in Pittsburgh. I can’t tell you how many regular retail average sales price homes I have sold. And I was staging houses for my clients in Pittsburgh, when so many other agents were wondering what staging was. ( Church laughs. )

Most of my clients are investor types, and that’s what helps me to provide my regular retail clients with a perspective many other agents just do not have. Additionally, I have worked with Banks, Asset Management Companies, Hedge funds, and family offices over the years. In 2012, I was the first feet on the ground to develop the largest  F.A.S.T waste treatment facility in the world at the time, located in Alexander, ND. And it’s not that I just know US real estate. I’m currently purchasing a 5000sf Villa to renovate in the south of Italy. I’ve owned a flat in Bulgaria, which I purchased in 2016, and sold for a 25% profit in 2020, and worked on a twenty-million dollar, vertical institutional transaction in Costa Rica in 2016. In short, I’ve been around the block, and know a thing or two!

The sale I may be most proud of happened twice, when I first sold a 13,000 sqft residential church – home to my client, Steve Hofstetter ( International Comedian.) Three years later, he called me back to sell it for him at a nice profit, and I was able to sell the most expensive and biggest residential home in Stanton Heights for a second time inside of  70 days on the market, during the beginning of a soft market. Steve sent me champagne and caviar for a closing gift, when closed. Many times when he would call and he would ask me if I was busy. My response was, ‘just drinking champagne and eating caviar,’ so the gift was a comedic and fitting return.”

If this biography sounds in depth, it is, yet fails to develop the full scope of this interesting Realtor’s life experience, as it is solely focused on his proficiency in real estate, leaving out Church’s endeavors into film, television, and the 600 page memoir he wrote while immersed in his daily and continuing Pittsburgh real estate prowess.