Rock and Roll Real Estate is a new company with experienced agents. Owned by business savvy real estate expert Steve Bate, who has been in the Florida real estate industry for 10 years, the firm’s goal is to transform the local real estate industry.
Bate has a 25-year background in the information technology industry, where he worked as an executive for various companies. He was also the managing director of Compuware.
Bate was given the opportunity to move to Florida and start the first Internet-based real estate company called Newhomes.com. “We were also the first buyers agency, so we only worked for the benefit of the buyer,” he said.
Through Newhomes.com, Bate built connections with many of Florida’s developers and builders. “I got to build a relationship with Jorge Perez CEO of the Related Group, which is the leading developer of luxury condos in Florida, and I got to know Donald Trump,” he said. “Through these relationships, I got to know the principals of their companies.”
Bate’s relationship with Trump provided him the opportunity to be the director of sales of the Trump Tower in Palm Beach. That opportunity triggered Bate to start his own real estate brokerage company, Steve Bate Real Estate in 2005. A seven-year resident of Wellington’s Versailles neighborhood, Bate became the top real estate broker in his community, where three out of five closings were his.
As the market changed due to the real estate bubble burst, Bate noticed the major impact it was having on the industry. He decided that in order to survive and thrive in the new real estate market, he had to be innovative to get things moving.
To stay ahead in real estate, Bate realized it’s about pushing the envelope. He decided to change the name of his former real estate brokerage company, Steve Bate Real Estate, to Rock and Roll Real Estate to reflect his new approach to real estate.
“It’s about rocking the banks to make things happen,” he said. “And that is why we are Rock and Roll Real Estate. We have to rock the real estate industry to get things moving now.”
Bate, along with his good friend and neighbor Rob Van Winkle — better known as rapper/musician and DIY Network star Vanilla Ice — decided it was time to push the envelope together.
One day Van Winkle told Bate about a new and exciting opportunity. “We were sitting in my garage at the time, and he told me about the idea for a TV show, where people would follow a celebrity who was flipping mansions that have been torn up,” Bate said.
Van Winkle asked Bate to find him a mansion that was in need of great repair. “I found a house in Versailles that had been worth well over a million dollars,” Bate said. “It had been stripped to the bone.”
It took Bate some hard work and persistence with the banks, but he eventually purchased the property for $419,000. The property became a hit for the first season of Van Winkle’s DIY Network Show The Vanilla Ice Project. “It took a lot of time, pushing and calling the bankers several times a day,” he said. “We went under the covers and identified some real problems and road blocks in getting it sold.”
The show changed both of their lives, and Bate soon became internationally known because of the it. “I was actually in Europe in November, and some people in London recognized me as the broker from The Vanilla Ice Project,” Bate said.
For more information, visit www.rockandrollrealestatefl.com or call (561) 254-7905.
