Changing of the guard at Sotheby’s Santa Fe | Business
People bought homes in Santa Fe in 2011. Many more people are buying homes now.
Gregg Antonsen ushered in the internet age at Sotheby’s International Realty Santa Fe during his 10 years as senior vice president and qualifying broker.
Drew Lamprich will foster the video element in January as he becomes the new vice president and qualifying broker for Sotheby’s local operation. Antonsen will retire to Hawaii, where he established his luxury real estate career and lived in his young-adult years.
Video has become a crucial element in home sales as a growing number of people are buying homes in Santa Fe without even coming to Santa Fe — but they are not committing sight unseen. They are “touring” and “inspecting” homes via live video.
Lamprich, 41, and his business partner, Penelope Vasquez, 73, happen to be video pioneers at Sotheby’s, where Lamprich was a rookie broker as recently as five years ago when he signed on at Sotheby’s for his first real estate job at age 35. They were among the first Sotheby’s agents in Santa Fe to appear in front of the camera.
“I really hope to encourage our folks to be in the videos,” Lamprich said. “You break down barriers [with homebuyers]. You are approachable. They get to know you. It keeps that relationship warm and personable.”
Antonsen, 68, sees value in these newfangled ways.
“It brings the home alive,” Antonsen said. “Otherwise, you are just seeing empty homes.”
Vasquez recruited Lamprich to her team when they were two of seven Santa Fe Sotheby’s agents at a Denver real estate conference. Lampich said it was two days after he received his real estate license. She watched him work the room, and she didn’t want a business partner in her age group.
“I wanted someone in tune with today’s technological changes,” Vasquez said.
Vasquez and Lamprich teamed up for nearly $100 million in real estate sales since 2016. At the same time, Lamprich was establishing himself within Sotheby’s and the Santa Fe real estate community. He joined the Santa Fe Association of Realtors board of directors in 2019. He serves as first vice president and will be president-elect in 2022 and SFAR’s president in 2023.
None of this surprises Vasquez.
“He has integrated himself in the community very quickly and effectively,” Vasquez said. “I think Drew came mature. He had managed a lot of people.”
Lamprich had managed a Lowe’s home improvement center during his 11 years in Austin, Texas, before moving to Santa Fe — and he had renovated the house he owned there, part of his longtime ambition to get into real estate when the time was right. It was right when he was 35, and it was the right time to leave Austin.
“It’s a college town, it’s the capital, it became a metropolis in that time,” Lamprich said. “I sold my first house that I renovated. That allowed me to do this. I wanted to buy a large parcel of land, which I did in Glorieta.”
He reached out to Sotheby’s on his first day in Santa Fe and was referred to Antonsen.
“I was interested in meeting with him,” Antonsen recalled. “There were things that stood out. He managed a major store in Austin. I saw he was very organized. He had leadership skills. [Later] I saw him interact very well with our clientele. I could see this guy is going to be dedicated.”
Antonsen wanted to retire in 2020 but wanted to see the pandemic through at least the return to relatively normal commerce during the course of this year.
Antonsen grew up and lived in Minnesota through law school, and in 1979 moved to Hawaii, where his parents had a second home. He opened his own luxury real estate office but sold it and returned to Minnesota in 1993.
Christie’s, the London auction house, acquired Santa Fe-based Great Estates in 1995 to create Chirstie’s International Realty, keeping the headquarters in Santa Fe.
Antonsen had been a Great Estates affiliate in Hawaii and Christie’s contacted him to become its senior vice president of business development in North America in 2003, bringing him to Santa Fe.
“When the headquarters moved to New York [in 2011], I didn’t want to move to New York,” Antonsen said.
The other legendary London auction house, Sotheby’s, just then had an opening for a senior vice president at its real estate operation in Santa Fe and brought on Antonsen. But Hawaii has always been on his radar.
“Ever since I left,” Antonsen said. “Going back made me recognize winter is not for me the older I get.”
Lamprich sees himself as a long-term successor to Antonsen, not a two-years-and-out sort.
“I’d say it’s a career,” Lamprich said. “Relationships take time. To do it justice to the role, you need to stay the course.”
Lamprich bounced around the country, originally from Oklahoma, but living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area from age 6 to 18.
He attended New York University for three years before heading back to Oklahoma to spend time with his grandparents, finishing his bachelor’s degree in sociology at the University of Tulsa.
Next stop was San Diego for three years, where he worked for United Cerebral Palsy as a program assistant, instructor and client advocacy coordinator; as a vocational counselor at Goodwill Industries; and doing in-house support services for San Diego County.
Later, as Austin massively grew, Lamprich looked for his next career, the one that had been in his mind for more than a decade: real estate.
“I wanted to go somewhere wonderfully connected to nature with deep culture and history and beautiful architecture,” Lamprich said. “There are so many elements I love. The fact you can live next door from someone who is 10th generation local and someone from another part of the world. I love that.”
