Ed Reams

I specialize in higher-end homes, including lakefront, lake view, riverfront and other "view" properties. I was born and raised in a small town in northwest Ohio, and attended college in Indiana, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Initially I pursued a degree in Political Science, which eventually morphed into pursuits in the fields of Advertising & Marketing. (Good thing, too – since life in an advertising agency can be quite political.)
For the next three decades, my career focused on market research, product development, advertising and marketing at a variety of firms on both the “client” and “agency” sides of the table. Among the agencies for whom I’ve worked are KKB and J. Walter Thompson, where I was the Director of Direct Response. And regarding clients, I’ve been fortunate to work with such firms as BellSouth and BellAtlantic (before divestiture), The Wall Street Journal, Bally’s Health Clubs, Six Flags Corporation, Tru Green Corporation, and LifeTouch Portrait Studios.
My wife and I have two daughters, and in 1992 were living in Marietta, Georgia when we decided to buy a parcel of land in the northeast Georgia/western North Carolina mountains. The plan was to buy the land at that time (we purchased 5 acres) and hold on to it for 20 years, until I retired from the advertising agency business – at which point we would have a cabin built. Well, you may have heard the expression “Man plans and God laughs” – which was exactly our experience. Rather than wait 20 years to have a small 2BR/2BA cabin built, we began construction within 5 weeks, and took possession in August, 1993.
We drove up to that little cabin every weekend, and found returning to Marietta to be more and more difficult. Although we loved our Marietta home, community and friends, we did not love the wall-to-wall traffic, high taxes or wall-to-wall people. And so in 2002 we decided to make the mountains our primary residence.
We’d purchased two ridgetop lots in a mountain community with stunning views of Lake Chatuge and the mountains, and had a new home built there in 2004 – at which point we sold our little cabin. I took an accelerated course of study in Raleigh to earn my Real Estate licenses (back then there were both Salespeople and Brokers), and after purchasing a rustic home built in the 1950’s to use as an office, officially opened the doors to Advantage Chatuge Realty.
Since then, our staff has grown from one agent to nine, we’ve built a new office at the corner of Hwy. 64 and 69 in Hayesville, and we continue to operate as a local, independent real estate firm – despite entreaties from several large multi-national firms to join them. Our focus and our structure are designed to deliver our clients an unparalleled level of service – as evidenced by our 5-Star Google Rating.