Austin Agent Wade Giles and His Team Bring Luxury Real Estate within Reach

Last year was a big one for The Giles Group . Consistently ranked among the top 10 residential real estate teams in Austin, Texas, the team joined Douglas Elliman in April 2023 and went on to end the year with approximately $85 million in total sales and named #1 team for DE in Texas by volume. With over $75 million in active and coming-soon listings, each with an average price point over $3 million, the team is poised for a stellar 2024. For the team’s founder, Wade Giles , with nearly half a billion dollars in personal sales, the successes have been a gratifying way to mark his tenth year in the business and a welcome chance to reflect on a journey that began in childhood with issues of The Robb Report (pilfered from his grandfather) and “an extreme fascination with horses.” Wade Giles and Sherlock “I would look at the real estate section, and I couldn’t understand why one massive house in one part of the country was listed for $3 million while an apartment in New York City was $20 million,” Giles recalled. “I remember almost pining over these homes and how unattainable they seemed.” Likewise, for a boy of modest circumstances who begged his parents to take him to visit the nearby horse farm, the prospect of becoming an equestrian athlete must have seemed impossibly out of reach. But Giles found a way. In exchange for learning to ride and train horses, he took to cleaning stalls and caring for the horses, waking up at 5:00 am each morning to bicycle to the farm before school. The experience instilled in him the tenacity and perseverance that enabled him to realize both of these formative dreams. Not only did he go on to rank among the top 0.01% of real estate agents in Austin, but Giles also won his division at the 2021 World’s Championship Horse Show riding his beloved horse, Sherlock. Dream Work, Dream Team Although he studied finance at Louisiana State University with a concentration in real estate, Giles didn’t launch his career in residential real estate right away. After graduating and working in finance in the wake of the 2009 recession, he and his now-husband, Jeff, moved to Austin in 2013, where he decided to give real estate a go despite having no rolodex, no experience, and was brand new to the City himself. In the decade that followed, Giles has built a powerhouse team of licensed real estate agents and a technology-driven support architecture and staff that remains nimble and flexible to meet the growing demands of the explosive Austin market. “What I think truly differentiates us as a team is our focus on systems and processes—which is not something that comes naturally to me,” said Giles, joking that his brain was effectively his customer relationship management system for the first half of his career. Today, Giles credits their software, systems, and processes with the Giles Group’s ability to consistently deliver a “top-notch customer experience.” For Giles, relationships are at the core of his business. “Last holiday season we gave out over a hundred Le Creuset pie dishes, complete with my mom’s infamous, and now not-so-secret, pecan pie recipe to past clients, most of whom haven’t bought in years. We have a great database we use to stay in touch with clients at our annual crawfish boil and quarterly group workouts, all in an effort to ensure they never feel like they’re just a transaction,” said Giles. The team’s emphasis on building authentic long-lasting relationships extends beyond their clients to include fellow agents, mortgage lenders, title representatives, inspectors, stagers and so many others in the Austin real estate community. “We’ve all worked with each other for years, so we’re able to have candid conversations,” said Giles, noting that this was especially important in 2020 and 2021, when properties routinely received 10 or more offers. “During that highly competitive market, we had a 72% acceptance rate of getting our buyers under contract with their first offer, and it wasn’t because they had the most money or they wrote the best offer. It was because we had those relationships with the other agents.” Another point of differentiation for the Giles Group is its ambitiously creative social media marketing, including stylishly cheeky video shorts shot on location at current listings and often featuring cameos by Giles’ rescue dogs and their operations manager’s pet pig, Carlton. Giving Back, Paying Forward Having reaped the rewards of pursuing his dreams, Giles finds tremendous fulfillment in helping others to achieve theirs—in both real estate and beyond. Giles and husband, Jeff Schab, with their newborn daughter, Harlow. Inspired by his own experience as a teenage rider who benefited from the kindness and generosity of others in the equestrian community, he is enabling another young dreamer to work with Sherlock and develop as a rider. Meanwhile, the Giles Group has dedicated itself to helping people find homes many thousands of miles from Texas thanks to its partnership with The Heart That Gives , a 501(c)3 organization that builds homes in South Africa and Uganda for the proceeds of homes bought or sold in Austin with the Giles Group. As he heads into his second decade in Austin real estate, Giles is happily at home and celebrating the next dream to come true: the birth of his first child, daughter Harlow, on May 9 th , who is affectionately known around the office as “baby HUGS.”