Press Releases & BLOG

OURAY – Shauna Davis is back in Colorado and she brought her family with her.

A real estate agent for San Juan Realty in Ridgway, Davis moved to Ouray in July, returning
to Colorado after many years and adventures.

Davis was born and grew up in Grand Junction, moving with her family to Arizona when she was
14. There she got an early start in her first career as a model.“In eighth or ninth grade I did
the Miss Arizona Teen Pageant,” she said. “It all started when the department store where my sister
worked had a fashion show, and it snowballed from there.”Davis went on to do quite a bit
of modeling and acting. She appeared in television commercials for Pringles, Budweiser and Seagrams. She appeared on the cover of Arizona Bride – “That issue came out the day I got married,” she said – as well as in several fashion shows for sports companies and local clothing stores. Davis also performed as actress Jane Seymour’s stunt double in the made-for-television movie Sunstroke.“I did all the scenes of her driving, so I got to drive a Jaguar. The film crew would be out there in the
middle of the street and I’d have to get right up close to them and just hope I didn’t run into them.” Davis got her 15 minutes of fame during the filming, when a busload of German tourists pulled up to the scene. “They thought I was some big movie star and they all wanted my autograph.” With her hair dyed to match Seymour’s, and her makeup and big movie-star sunglasses, Davis no doubt looked the part.The movie was filmed out in the desert, as was the Pringles commercial. “It was filmed at night in
the middle of the desert, and it gets pretty cold out there,” Davis said. She was dressed as a cowgirl, with a horse and a cowboy to keep her company around the campfire.“I had to eat a million Pringles,”
she said. “They wanted me to bite into a barbecue-flavored Pringle and then immediately howl like
a coyote, and that’s not easy to do with your mouth full of Pringles!”

At the same time she was modeling, Davis attended Mesa Community College, waited tables at
Applebee’s and spent two seasons on the dance team for the professional basketball team the Phoenix Suns. And that was when she met her husband Greg, an NFL kicker who, in a 12-year career, played for the Arizona Cardinals, the Atlanta Falcons, the San Diego Chargers, and the Oakland Raiders.“Our coach was married to the center for the Arizona Cardinals,” Davis said. “They invited him to dinner at their house one night, and he saw a picture of me and asked about me.” Davis’s coach decided to play matchmaker. “I had all these preconceived notions about football players, and I didn’t really want to date one. But my coach said, ‘Kickers are different.’” Davis agreed to a blind date. “I just
loved his southern accent, and we talked about all kinds of things that you don’t usually get around to on a first date.”Four months later they were engaged and a year after that, married.

The couple established a seasonal pattern of spending half the year at their home in Alpharetta, Ga., in the Atlanta area, and half the year with Greg’s team, usually in Arizona. Having a husband in
the NFL “was a fun adventure, but it was stressful,” said Davis.

They move around a lot, and that complicated things when they decided to start a family.

“He was supposed to leave for a game Saturday morning but my water broke, so he called the coach
to see if he could meet the team at the game,” Davis said of the birth of their oldest daughter, Savannah. After the birth, Greg took a red-eye flight to the game, made a record kick, saved the ball and had it painted for his new daughter.

After Greg retired from the NFL, the family moved to Rome, Ga., to a farm that had been in Greg’s family for over 100 years. Greg tinkered with tractors and fixed up the old farmhouse, and the couple tried to figure out what to do next. Since Greg had already lived one of his dreams, this time it
was Davis’s turn.  The family decided to gamble on Vegas, and Davis decided to get her realtor’s license.  “I got my start in Vegas, where it’s really competitive and crazy,” she said. “I’m glad I got started there, it helped me a lot with marketing and helped me get my business started once I got here.” Davis attended the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing in Miami, where she learned to help sellers de-clutter, reorganize and present their homes attractively to buyers.

It didn’t take the family long to realize it was time to move on to Colorado. Now Davis works for Karen Brooks at San Juan Realty. “I’m so happy I found this place because it’s a great office and I love it,” Davis said. “They always say, ‘Do a job you love and you’ll be fine.’ Since I love Colorado and I love people and I love houses, it’s just perfect.”

The Davis’s daughters Savannah and Charlotte are both at the Ouray School, where their grandmother works in the library. And Greg has recently finished writing a book about his military college, The Citadel, and his experiences with the NFL.Writing the book gave Greg the chance to research what happens to NFL players after retirement, and according to Davis, it’s not always a happy ending. “He did a lot of research into head injuries and what they cause,” she said, noting that “75 or 80 percent of retired players end up bankrupt or divorced or dead. They go through their whole lives striving to get to a certain level, and once it’s over they don’t know where to go or what to do.” The book is currently being edited and, with the help of the Penn Group out of New York, Greg hopes to find a publisher. “It’s a new process to us, and it’s a long one, but he loves to write and if this gets published he’s got ideas for more.”

In the meantime, they’ll wait for summer to roll back around so that Davis can finally convince Greg that Colorado, not Georgia, does in fact have the best peaches.

Meet Your Neighbor

By Christina Callicott

The Institute for Luxury Home Marketing Press Release and Luxury Market Update

 Press Release

CONTACT: Shauna Davis, San Juan Realty, Inc. 970.708.0503 www.CoolMountainProperties.com  

$175 million sale sets new U.S. residential sales record

Most expensive property for sale in San Miguel County: $25,000,000

(December, 2007)  The U. S. housing market overall may be suffering from the doldrums, but wealthy home buyers continue to invest in homes at the very top of the market. Evidence of the strength of the luxury home segment was revealed in late November with the sale of the Trinchera Ranch in Colorado for a record-setting $175 million.  This sale breaks the U.S. residential sales record of $103 million set earlier this year in New York’s Hamptons. 

By comparison, the most expensive property currently on the market in San Miguel County is $25,000,000, according to Shauna Davis, a real estate professional with San Juan Realty, Inc.  “This property is certainly more affordable than the $165 million home in Los Angles that is the priciest listing in America today,” said Davis.

Sellers of the Colorado property were the heirs of the late Malcolm Forbes, who acquired control of the historic Trinchera ranch in 1969.  The buyer is billionaire hedge fund manager Louis Moore Bacon, who appears as number 286 on the Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans.  Trinchera is the largest ranch in Colorado and its 171,400 acres contain five residences and a Western style lodge with 16 bedrooms. 

Although the Colorado sale set a U.S. sales record, it fell short of the world record residential purchase, also set this year, with Sheikh Hamad of Qatar’s acquisition of a penthouse condominium in London for £100 million - equivalent to about $200 million at the time of the sale.

“Although the vast Colorado ranch, the ocean front lot in the Hamptons, and the London penthouse condominium are not apples-to-apples comparisons, they are each indicative of the health of the very top of the world’s luxury home market,” said Laurie Moore-Moore, Founder of The Institute for Luxury Home Marketing, an international organization which tracks the luxury home market and trains luxury real estate agents.   

“These sales illustrate the fact that there are more rich households than ever before and the world’s wealthiest have shifted more of their investment dollars out of alternative investments like commodities and into multiple residences.  Based on this year’s World Wealth Report from Merrill Lynch and CapGemini, the world’s über rich have invested 12% of their total portfolios in homes other than a primary residence,” said Moore-Moore.  “In short, there is more money than ever competing for homes at the very top of the market. The luxury residential market is the good news story in real estate.”

Davis, a member of The Institute for Luxury Home Marketing, agrees.  “In most markets across the country, the very top of the market remains healthy – luxury is the ‘sweet spot’ in real estate.”