$1 Billion Man: Matt Dejanovich Talks About a 30-Year Real Estate Career in Washtenaw County

A few months ago Realtor Matt Dejanovich sold a home in Dexter for $720,000. 

Like every home sale Dejanovich has made over the years, whether it was for $49,000 or $2 million or somewhere in between, it was an important sale.  As Dejanovich says, for the person buying or selling their home, that transaction can be one of the most important, personal and stressful decisions they're going to make all year. 

He takes the challenge as seriously as they do.

But this sale helped Dejanovich reach an impressive personal milestone: $1,000,000,000 in career sales.

A billion is a big number. That's 9 zeroes. It's the kind of number that catches your attention.

"People have been asking me for two or three years when I was going to hit it. I thought for sure I'd hit it this year, and then with the virus hitting, I wasn't so sure," Dejanovich said.  "But once we recovered, things have taken off."

Dejanovich admits it was the kind of milestone that caused him to pause and reflect on his career. When he started out in real estate, he didn't set out to make a billion dollars in sales.

"My goal is to help as many people as I can. A billion dollars in sales means I've helped a lot of people reach their goal of buying or selling a house," Dejanovich said. "My outlook was if I help enough other people accomplish their real estate goals then my real estate goals will be accomplished as a byproduct of that."

Dejanovich isn't the first realtor in Washtenaw County to reach $1 billion in sales. 

"But I'm the first one to do it without staffing out my sales to members of a team," Dejanovich said. "I learned when I was an assistant for Dave Dean 30 years ago, when the client calls the office, they want to to talk to the person they listed their house with. I've never believed the important job I'm hired to do is worthing passing on to an underling. For that person on the phone, that transaction is the most important transaction in their life, regardless of the price tag associated with it."

Dejanovich lives in the Saline area with his wife, Kris. They raised two children, Logan and Jensen, who graduated from Saline Area Schools. 

The realtor is always well dressed, clean-cut and dapper. He's thoughtful about the words he chooses and laid back and polite in their delivery. 

Behind it all is the kind of intensity it takes to sell a $1 billion worth of real estate.

Dejanovich was born in Washtenaw County. He grew up on his family's farm in Willis and attended Ypsilanti-Lincoln High School. They had a hundred dairy cattle and also raised crops on 400 acres of land.

"So yeah, I grew up slinging hay bales and cleaning calf pens and that was my life until I graduated from Lincoln and I went to the University of Michigan," Dejanovich said.

He graduated with a degree in economics from Michigan and got his real estate license to work for a corporate business brokerage. Not thrilled with their shady business practices, he left the job after a few months.

Dejanovich's parents knew Dave Dean, one of the top-producing real estate agents in Ann Arbor, and mentioned to their son had his license. Dean hired Dejanovich as his personal assistant. Dejanovich did paperwork, helped with listings and whatever Dean asked.

"I learned an awful lot from him," Dejanovich said.

After a couple years, Dejanovich decided to strike out on his own. 

"When I started, I thought it was going to be temporary. I thought I'd go back to school and get an MBA and get a real job," Dejanovich said.

The first house he sold was a small house in Ypsilanti Township for friends of his parents. He remembers taking the first "blind call" from a woman asking for help to sell her house in Hell, Mich. He pulled up to the home and was greeted by the sight of a 12-foot satellite dish in the front yard and a mounted drain field.

"The house was so crooked you could put a marble at the front door and let it go and it would get going so fast that it would break the glass door by the time it got to the back house," Dejanovich said.

But he sold it. For $49,900. And he had a satisfied customer.

He remembers those early days as a realtor - trying to make a living while working on commission.

"Living off credit cards and trying to get over that hump. You either get your job done and earn an income or you don't make anything at all. There are times when you're like, 'Man. I don't know. Maybe I should jump back into some other kind of work.'" Dejanovich said. "There were a couple of desperate points, but I always believed I would get over to the other side of it. Failure was not an option."

Fairly quickly, he realized he was developing a successful business. He was successfully listing and selling homes in a short amount of time and building a base of customers.

Without hesitation, Dejanovich credits the farm family work ethic for his success.

"My dad would tell you, if he was still alive, that it's from working hard on the farm. There's no such thing as a day off when you're raising dairy cattle," Dejanovich said. "You've got to be willing to work."

Younger real estate agents pick his brain and want to know the tricks of the trade.

He remembers a five-year period in his life where he worked every Saturday and Sunday, excluding some holidays.

"I tell some people that's what you've got to do and they're like, 'I don't want to do that,'" Dejanovich said. "I feel I owe it to every single person who puts their trust in me to accomplish the task at hand."

Real estate can be an 18-hour-a-day, seven-day a week job.  At times, it's made for a tough work-life balance, but he managed to find a way to attend his son's soccer and hockey games and daughter's dance recitals.

Dejanovich credits the support of his family. Within the industry, he credits Dave Dean, Real Estate One office manager Jeff Stabnau, and the Elsea family.

With $1 billion in the rearview mirror, what's next? Dejanovich laughs and says, "$1 billion down, $1 billion to go." But you get the sense that he's not joking. He's not ready to give it all up and spend his days golfing.

"You know, my mission is the same in year 30 as it was in year one: I want to help as many people buy and sell a house," Dejanovich said. "I'm too young to retire. I enjoy what I do. I meet a lot of nice people and help them moves their lives forward."

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