The chairman of one of Dallas’ most successful real estate firms never had much interest in China, except that his son lived there.  

But two years ago, all the signs started leading Robbie Briggs, head of Briggs Freeman Real Estate Brokerage, to make one of the most radical moves possible – from the comfort of the Dallas he has known since he was a boy to the uncertainty of Beijing.

“China got hold of my heart,” he says after being invited to take a tour of the country.

Now he is returning for his second year of learning the country, the culture and the language, and he will be focusing on new business and philanthropic ventures.

He is chairman of a 1,800-student international school in Beijing and lives in an enclave of American and European business executives and embassy staff. “I already am better connected with the corporate community in Beijing than I am in Dallas,” he says.

He is also mentoring a group of 16- to 22-year-old males who were street kids with little hope of a good future. And this year, he wants to study how he might help build affordable housing for some of the 300 million migrant workers in China – the size of the U.S. population.

The son of a prominent Dallas family, Mr. Briggs never thought his career would be in real estate. He grew up listening to his father, Ben Briggs, talk about real estate sales around the dinner table.

But his passion, since he was 8 years old, was architecture. He studied architecture at Tulane University, but the realities of the profession then – long hours, low pay and being at the whim of demanding clients – cooled his passion.

So he quit helping design buildings like the Anatole hotel and Dallas’ World Trade Center. To support his young family while he tried to figure out what he wanted do, Mr. Briggs asked his father for a job in his real estate firm.

His father thought he was too young to sell any homes. For his father, who had substantial oil and gas industry income, real estate was a hobby. And many of those who worked for him sat in the office playing gin and waiting for the phone to ring.

The 24-year-old Robbie Briggs changed all that. He started calling people to get listings. “After a year, I was running the office,” he says. He bought the firm’s first copy machine, replaced the manual typewriters and invited an interior designer to redo the “dump” of an office.

But in his mind he thought real estate was a short-term career. “I always thought I would be doing something else,” he says.

As the firm grew, he gave up listing and selling homes because he felt he could not recruit the best agents if he was in competition with them. “When I stopped selling and started managing the business, that is when I really came to love it,” he says.

In the 1980s, he doubled the size of the firm twice when whole offices joined the firm.

Now with 127 agents, Charles Freeman as a partner and Stephanee Bates as a highly organized chief operating officer, Mr. Briggs says he was beginning to feel like a “figurehead.”

“I came to work every day,” he says, but he found himself spending more time on the firm’s and his own charitable interests from the arts to education to The Katy Trail.

Then the coincidences pointing him to China started. He attended the National Prayer Breakfast for the first time and met Chinese business and civic leaders. Friends of his son, who was managing a small leather factory in China, took him on a fateful tour of the country.

So beginning last year, the 51-year-old Mr. Briggs, who might relax and enjoy his success, moved his family to Beijing.

Now he commutes – physically and electronically – between Dallas and China. He is still involved in the strategic issues of the firm.

“I am convinced that Briggs Freeman will do better than it ever has.” He points to the firm’s relationship with the new 42-story Museum Tower in the Dallas Arts District as an example of the future growth of the firm.

“It is a very exciting building,” he says.

But he will oversee the sales of the tower and the other activities of the firm from halfway around the world. As long as the Chinese government will let him, Mr. Briggs plans to develop new opportunities for himself and his firm in China.

A strong possibility is helping build affordable housing. He met and worked with two architects who invited him to study and work with them in Biloxi, Miss., rebuilding houses after Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast.

In what he calls “Boots to Beijing,” Mr. Briggs wants to take his knowledge of real estate and affordable housing construction to build homes for the Chinese migrant workers.

It may be a world apart – selling homes to the affluent in Dallas and building homes for the poorest of China. But Mr. Briggs sees the move as a continuation of his and his firm’s commitment to helping others.

He says, “I feel like I am the most blessed person in the world.”

Source:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/classifieds/advertising/homecenter/general/stories/DN-sah0811_feature.ART.State.Edition1.4293f6e.html