Some say that Nate Shaffer was born to practice real estate. He has always had a love for property, development, construction, design, and all of the interactions and communications needed in order to dream, design, create, and facilitate the transfer and sale of real estate.
In 2003, as a 23-year-old college student, Nate was hired as an intern to assist with the process of land acquisition for Regional Land Company. This was his big start, and he began practicing real estate as an assistant to a seasoned Land Broker, Kevin Heisinger. These early experiences allowed him to learn from the best and to play a passive role in some large California land transactions between land owners and national builders such as Woodside Homes, Lennar, KB Home, and DR Horton. These types of transactions were common for Kevin and his Regional Land Company, and it helped set the stage for Nate to begin his real estate career.
Nate later moved to Las Vegas, where he began interviewing with developers and Real Estate Brokers, and became a licensed agent under Liberty Realty in 2006, but it proved to be a difficult time to set up shop and build a real estate business in a new area, and the recession forced Nate to pursue other occupations for a time. He was hired as a Project Engineer for KHS&S Contractors and helped manage the interior build-outs along with exterior and theming elements of multiple large-scale commercial buildings such as The Cosmopolitan, Aliante Station Hotel & Casino, The Fontainebleau, and various MGM Grand and Palazzo renovation projects. In 2010, with the market recession deepening, Nate saw that these large construction projects were winding down, and there was a need to shift into something more stable during these times of recession.
He decided to hire on with Waxie Sanitary Supply and began selling building maintenance products. Nate enjoyed this new challenge and quickly found that his experience in real estate and construction management helped prepare him to sell products that would be utilized to clean and maintain the very buildings he had helped to build over the prior years. While at Waxie, Nate gained valuable knowledge on consultative selling and the value of win-win negotiation that he would later end up utilizing throughout the rest of his career. His time at Waxie was an enjoyable one, and he received much recognition and awards as the top salesman for his ability to create new business for the company. While at Waxie, Nate noticed that the real estate market was beginning to come back. He and his wife and kids had now been living in Las Vegas for 7 years, and he had built many relationships and connections. Nate reactivated his real estate license in 2015, and things went very differently this time. Selling real estate came easy, and he quickly remembered this had always been what he was most passionate about.
In late 2015, the Shaffers decided that it was time for a change and began making plans to move to St. George, Utah. Nate left his job with Waxie and continued to practice real estate in Las Vegas, but decided to also get licensed in Utah, where he hung his license with Keller Williams, St. George. Although the area was new to him, and he did not know anyone except a couple of friends and his own parents who had recently retired to St. George, Nate got to work learning all he could about Southern Utah and making friendships with all he came in contact with. Nate’s business took off, and he quickly built what would become a top-ranked team of agents in Southern Utah, The Shaffer Team. In 2023, Nate decided it was time to change from a team model to a brokerage model and offer the agents more opportunities for growth, and he started Element Real Estate Brokers in August of 2023.
Today, Element is a newly formed brokerage that is growing quickly due to its practices and processes, which have been built upon the principles of win-win selling, a consultative approach, and an abundance mentality. Unlike most brokerages, Element is structured much like Nate operated his team, with a larger than usual amount of staff and support for the agents to free up their time to sell and build relationships, allowing them to work under a brand that is known by the community for conducting good, honest, and smart business. Nate is excited about the future of Element Real Estate Brokers and how it will benefit the community of St. George and future locations where it chooses to set up branch locations.
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