Andrea Schutter Reibeling finds her natural talent as a realtor in Round Top.
One of Texas’s smallest towns, Round Top (population 90) is located on the eastern edge of Texas Hill Country. It’s about an hour-and-a-half drive from Houston and from Austin. Whichever way you arrive, it doesn’t take long for the sense of place to surround you. Farmland extends into the horizon. Longhorns graze in the pasture. Texas bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush blanket the ground like a purple and orange patchwork quilt. They say everything is bigger in Texas, and it feels like it. The sky feels bigger. The land feels more expansive. It almost feels like the last undiscovered corner on earth – except people are discovering it.
In fact, in 2016, Texas Monthly wrote about Round Top’s unlikely real estate boom and ongoing development projects calling it the “Aspen of Texas,” but it’s been on the map long before that. Texas Antiques Week is a big part of that. For more than 50 years, this event held biannually in the spring and fall has brought hundreds of thousands of people to town. This is how Andrea Schutter Reibeling first discovered it.
“My husband brought me here,” Andrea says. Andrea and Danny [a.k.a. “Big D”] went to high school together, reconnected 35 years later, dated six months, got married and have been married for nine years.
A Houston native, Andrea admits she had heard of Round Top, but says, “I never really knew anything about it.” She describes her first impression, “It was Easter weekend, the first weekend of the spring show. My eyes were as big as plates.”
She also recalls the sense of community she felt right away. “Danny is a very funny, very popular guy, and everywhere we would go, everyone would know him. We visited friends with beautiful homes. I felt very special. And I was thinking, ‘This is not your podunk town,’” Andrea says. “It wasn’t that far out in the country. It was close enough to Austin and Houston for me.”
The couple now makes their home in Round Top. “We live on 50 acres in a 3,000-SF ‘barndominum,’” she says. “People here are friendly and helpful. You meet a lot of happy people here.”
Four years ago, Andrea went to school to become a real estate agent and now works for Coldwell Banker in residential and commercial real estate. “My territory is huge. Washington County, Fayette County, Austin County, Colorado County. From 290 all the way to I-10,” she says. Her clientele is a mix of older and younger people, between 40 and 70 years old, she says. “Sixty is the new 50. People who come out here want an extra home on the property. An income-producing property, like an Airbnb, they are getting more value.”
An interesting thing happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. At first, in March and April, she lost a few million-dollar deals, but by May, she said real estate blew up. “People are working from home. They want something new and fresh. They want to live somewhere beautiful, and they feel like they can breathe out here. We look at the land, the trees, the soil. I show them, ‘this is where you would put your house.’ I have to give them the vision,” she says.
During the pandemic, she also began pursuing an online degree in interior design. “I went to college and studied interior design, but didn’t finish. I got my license as an aesthetician. I went to a makeup academy in Orlando then traveled the world as a celebrity makeup artist. I worked for the Golf Channel, Fox Sports, and Disney/MGM before going freelance for motion picture television. I really understand color and warmth. I can see beauty.”
This eye for beauty has come full circle and translates into interior design. “Now I take my clients to the show (during Texas Antiques Week), and I can tell them how to do it. Take little steps. Focus on one thing you want, and you won’t get overwhelmed.”
It’s like that with her real estate clients, as well. “Driving around, through rolling hills, seeing how green it is, seeing all that’s available, my clients can get overwhelmed. I may work with them for a year before we find something. It’s my duty to train them. This is where my vision comes in. I get excited when I get to show them something. I get really giddy.” She also takes them around town and shows them how livable it is here. “We have great schools, a bank, a grocery store, a mercantile, and local wineries. People are opening up lots of stores, a boutique hotel, and bed-and-breakfasts. There’s culture here – an art center and performance hall in Fayetteville, and, of course, there’s Festival Hill in Round Top.”
Among her recent deals is Third Base in Warrenton, a commercial venue that has been transformed into the Dugout offeriing live music and food, as well as a retail space. Another was formerly called Cardinal House in Fayette County. It was a B&B, and it will be a weekend home and eventually an Airbnb. She has a current listing, Antiques and Interiors, with 14,000-SF of retail space that she says will take a special buyer. The owner is renovating the old farmhouse on the property, and it is going to be an incredible restoration that will add value and make it livable.
“I’ve been told I am a rainmaker in real estate,” she laughs. “I can just sell that real estate and make things happen!”
To learn more about Andrea’s listings, contact her directly at andreaschutter@gmail.com.