Well-known real estate company welcomes longtime instructor back from retirement

Michael Saunders & Co. is placing an emphasis on educational opportunities with a new hire. 

Darla Furst, the company’s educational trainer and consultant, was added to the team to teach a variety of sales training courses. Part of her role includes enhancing the current professional development curriculum to be comprehensible by all experience levels. 

“We are thrilled to have Darla Furst in this critical role,” founder and CEO Michael Saunders says in a news release. “Leveraging her expertise, our agents will be getting quality content from someone who has been involved in all sides of real estate – sales, management and industry leadership positions. She is highly respected within the industry and will be a vital educational resource to our agents.”

Furst had been with the Sarasota-based company before this new role. For 20 years, she served as a Michael Saunders & Co. branch manager prior to retiring in 2020. Also during her career, Furst, a licensed real estate instructor for the state, coached and ran seminars for the Realtor Association of Sarasota and Manatee, the Venice Area Board of Realtors and small independent brokerages.

She is currently a Florida Realtors board of directors member as well as a Sarasota Association of Realtors past president. Furst also served as commission chair for the Florida Real Estate Commission for two years and was a member between 2010 and 2016.

Her new role is focused on continuous education. The courses she’s set up so far include having a successful open house, preparing for a listing presentation, the contract-to-closing process and business planning for new associates. Planned future classes are expected to cover topics that include farming and prospecting, business planning for experienced associates and handling market statistics.

“This business and the marketplace are completely fluid and continuously changing,” Furst says in the release. “We, as professionals, need to make sure that we, too, are advancing and keeping up with our training and knowledge in this business of real estate. Our customers expect that of us.”

The 46-year-old company runs 24 full-service real estate offices that employs more than 600 agents and 150 support team members in the area.