Steve Jolly is a full-time real estate broker with Benchmark Realty, LLC, serving buyers, sellers, investors, banks, lenders and asset management companies across Greater Nashville and Middle Tennessee. He has 21+ years in the business, more than $133 million in closed sales, 444 personal sales and 626 team [...]

Steve Jolly is a full-time real estate broker with Benchmark Realty, LLC, serving buyers, sellers, investors, banks, lenders and asset management companies across Greater Nashville and Middle Tennessee. He has 21+ years in the business, more than $133 million in closed sales, 444 personal sales and 626 team sales.

He came to real estate sideways. Steve moved to Nashville in 2000 and started as a contractor in 2001, got his license in 2005, and before that ran quality assurance at a medical device manufacturer and managed a branch at an investment firm. The contractor years are why he can walk a house and tell you what the repairs will cost. The statistics degree is why he doesn't guess about the rest.

Most of his career has been in REO and bank-owned property, hundreds of transactions for institutional sellers. That work covers pricing strategy, occupancy, title issues, repair decisions, strict timelines and detailed reporting, and it means he knows how the other side of a distressed sale thinks. On a recent national servicer scorecard he scored 90 overall, with a perfect 100 on marketing against a Tennessee state average of 75. Recent assignments ranged from a $275,000 house in Donelson to a $1.65 million home near Green Hills that closed 8% above valuation in 36 days.

Steve served as the 2022 President of Greater Nashville REALTORS and sits on the RealTracs board of directors.

He also publishes. Steve analyzes RealTracs MLS data and posts what he finds at NashvilleRealEstateNow.com, including which listings sell, which never do, and what sellers give up by pricing wrong. He tracks every foreclosure notice filed in Middle Tennessee and matches them against county assessor and federal lending records. That research has been cited by the Daily Mail, Realtor.com, the Nashville Business Journal, NPR, Redfin, U.S. News and Axios. In 2017 he wrote Kill Cold Calls, a book on content marketing for real estate agents.

Clients tend to mention the same things: he will tell you when a house has problems and advise you to walk away, he is direct about what your home will actually sell for, and he does not pressure anyone into a deal that does not work.
 

Steve works alongside Kay Syovata at Benchmark Realty. Call or text 615-519-0983.