By J. Graber
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The name Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty may be synonymous with high end real estate around these parts, but Jim Lyon, grandson of founder Russ Lyon, is careful about how he uses the word “luxury.”

The company claims it now owns the top market share of homes over $1 million in Arizona and has sold homes for as much $30 million, but it does not specialize in the luxury market or luxury homes, Jim said.

“I don’t like to use the word ‘luxury’ unless it’s based in luxury service to all our clients,” he said. “We call it white glove service for everyone.”

That includes providing buyers with direct access to services like local home inspectors, contractors, interior designers, service providers, property managers, lending professionals, title and escrow companies, painters, gardeners, plumbers, electricians and home warranty companies.

There’s no snobbery, the company deals in homes less than $1 million “every day,” Jim said. It’s dealt in properties from as cheap as around $30,000, but has always dealt in high end homes as well. And it’s the multi-million dollar homes that make the headlines. For example, Russ Lyon Sotheby’s just sold a home in Paradise Valley May 28 for $10.8 million - $1 million more than the asking price.

In fact, that specialization in high end homes that has allowed the company to grow the last few years. In a time when most of the market has been slowing because of soaring interest rates, Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty has been excelling.

“It’s very steady,” Lyon said. “Our first quarter was outstanding and our second quarter looks just as good, if not better, than last year.”

The reason, high end home buyers aren’t driven by interest rates. They’re paying cash or borrowing against their own equity, Lyon said.

Today the company has around 950 agents representing properties from Tubac to Flagstaff, but it has taken generations of Lyons to build the company up to what it is today.

Russ Lyon started the business in 1947, though he wasn’t a native of the area.

It was a different time back then, and things were just done differently. Russ once sold the Wrigley mansion sitting in the bar of the Pink Pony.

“That was the old times, the old west” Jim said. He wrote everything on a napkin.”

It was sometime in the 1950s when Russ moved the company from Phoenix to Scottsdale, where it’s been ever since.

Jim’s father Dennis then bought the business in 1968 and grew the company to about 350 agents before Jim bought it from him in 1998.

Jim and his friend Todd Gillenwater, whom Jim has known since he was five, were working for Russ Lyon in 2004 when they left and opened separate agencies in Flagstaff, Sedona and Prescott.

Then in 2008 the two men, along with a third partner, wound up buying Dennis out of Russ Lyon and merged with Sotheby’s. Jim then bought out the other partner two years later and brought in Tom Locati.

Jim credits his close relationships Gillenwater and Locati for a large part of the business’ recent success.

“We’ve remained extremely good friends and also business partners, which makes the company run really smooth.”

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