By Taylor Hood/ Journal Staff Writer Monday, June 5th, 2017,12:02am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Lance Sigmon, principal at Allen Sigmon Real Estate Group, is a regular guy. He’s the kind of guy who immediately makes you feel like you have been friends for years.
Sigmon is a father of four, happily married and doing a job he loves. “I always had visions of real estate being a job where I just kick around in my robe and slippers and collect checks every month.”
The reality is obviously much different, but every day he gets closer to that vision.
For now, his 7-year-old daughter is lying on the couch in his office while he is interviewed. He is surrounded by trophies from hunting trips that are fond memories for him. His Eagle Scout flag sits on the table behind him, and he speaks passionately about the pastoral cowboy painting dominating the far wall of his office.
But when he talks about his love for his desk as the first new piece of furniture he ever bought, one understands, Lance Sigmon is a man who never does anything halfway.
You have a pretty big family. What is that like?
We’ve had a great life. We had our kids young. They (twin boys) were born three days before I finished finals for my bachelor’s degree, and I remember studying in the hospital, and I’d have one baby in one arm and a textbook in the other. And then I’d leave my wife and go take a final and then come back. It was probably the hardest week of my life, but we love being young parents.
You grew up on a farm in La Jara, Colo.?
Yeah. But then when I was in elementary school, we moved down to Bernalillo and we still raised animals and I would go back in the summers and work with my grandparents on the farm. And we would raise animals and do 4-H and compete in that. So from being a young boy, from 7 years old, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have to wake up early and go out and take care of sheep or cows or chickens or a pig, we’ve had one of everything – turkeys, we’ve had it all.
What do you do for fun?
Well, I love spending time with my family, and that’s on different levels. For me and my boys, I love hunting and fishing, ’cause there is just something about being in nature with my boys around a campfire, telling some stories, with some truth and some lies. Embellishment is a great quality for a fireside story.
My girls are spectacular, and they love beaches. I didn’t grow up on the beach, but for spring break we rented a beach house in Mexico and we did snorkeling with turtles and spear-fishing. And the last night, the caretakers of the house cooked up all of the fish we had caught.
Plus, my family, we love wild game. So I have grinders and dehydrators and meat slicers. We have all of the processing equipment. So we make different jerky recipes. We take bacon and mix it in with our burgers. We love just being out there and cooking together.
Where did you attend college?
I went to Ricks College in southeastern Idaho, which is now known as Brigham Young University Idaho. I attended a year there, and then I went on a mission for the (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) to southern Argentina for two years.
So all the way at the bottom of Patagonia. Ah man, it was awesome. Just natural resource-wise, it’s amazing. The mountain range between Chile and Argentina looks like a postcard. It is beautiful. And there’s these blue alpine lakes up there, these glacial lakes. Then you have Patagonia, which is kind of the middle part that’s just like barren desert. Then you have the eastern side which is on the coast, and we would see penguins and all kinds of stuff.
What did you do after your mission?
Then I came back to the United States, and I finished my schooling at Ricks. But when I came back, they made an announcement that said, “Hey, we are going to accredit this school and offer four-year degrees and we are going to change the name to Brigham Young University Idaho.”
So I just stayed there. I have two degrees on the wall, one from Ricks College and one from BYU Idaho, which, I never left campus. So I lived there until then but after I graduated, we came down here and I was a partner with a pest control company, Preventive Pest Control here in town.
And so while I was in the pest control business, the woman who sold my wife and I our house, the broker, her name is Kate Southard. Great woman, I love Kate. She said, “You gotta be in the real estate business. You need to get your license.”
So after we bought our house, I referred her another client who bought his house through her and as a gift for that referral, she paid for my tuition to go to real estate school.
And so I sat down and told my wife I want to get out of this (pest control) business and go into real estate but I don’t know if I want to do residential or commercial real estate.
Well, when we moved back here, we lived with my in-laws. And while we were there, we attended church with guys named Roger Cox and Brad Allen. They were two guys in the commercial real estate business. And so I talked with my wife about it and, you know, we had a young family and it’s all commission so there is an element of risk there, but I had saved up my money.
And she has always been supportive. She has been my biggest cheerleader. She has been a wonderful companion, and she was like, “OK, let’s do it.” And after (talking and praying), we felt like commercial real estate was the path to go down. So I went over to Roger Cox and Associates where Brad Allen was the president, and I said, `I would like to come and do commercial real estate with you guys, will you have me?’ And he said, “Absolutely. Come on over.” And so that is how it started.
And how long were you at Roger Cox and Associates?
I was there (from 2004) until 2011.
What was the impetus to split off and start your own company?
So the reason that I wanted to go work for Roger Cox and Associates was because Roger Cox, in my mind, was the man. He had done everything that I wanted to do. … Roger had brokered a ton of real estate. He was a very successful broker. But he had also developed a bunch of real estate which I wanted to do badly. But how would you even learn how? You need a mentor. So I went there, and I worked hard. Brad and I started partnering on things after I had been there for a while. And I found an excellent partner in Brad. We both had the same mentality, the same goals.
So for those seven years, I brokered, and looked for opportunities together with Brad. And we had a great relationship with Roger. He was our partner, our mentor. In a lot of ways, I feel like he treated me almost like a son. And it was a wonderful relationship.
So I (was) in my 30s, and Roger (was) in his 80s. Brad and I have these visions of expanding and growing the empire. But there came a time when we realized that if we were going to grow, we need to do that on our own.
We left with Roger’s blessing, still partners on things. There was no animosity, no hard feelings.
Story originally reported on the Albuquerque Journal: https://www.abqjournal.com/1012968/111111-no-headline-9.html
Allen Sigmon Real Estate Group is a full-service commercial real estate company based in Albuquerque with an expertise in acquisitions, brokerage, development, and property management. As a local company, we pride ourselves in our knowledge of the New Mexico commercial market and the relationships we are able to foster compared to larger national firms. Our office works with every kind of commercial property; including office, industrial, retail, land, and multifamily.
Our understanding of client needs and concerns not only comes from our experience as an office but also as owners and investors of commercial property ourselves. We have an excellent team in place that is eager to work on your behalf; our results speak for themselves.