Frustration with renting and landlords lead Sandi Smith into real estate and an interest in how communities are built and governed.

Smith, the president of Ann Arbor’sTrillium Real Estate, started in the field of real estate before she graduated from college after some bad experiences with student housing.

“I was a little miffed at the process of moving into a junky house and fighting with the landlord for the security deposit after a year or two,” Smith said. She asked her parents for a loan so she could buy a house, rent out rooms and then pay her parents back.

“It worked out nicely, and I became very familiar with how to process those sorts of transactions,” she said.

Smith said her extended family members have always added onto properties they own and frequently engage in remodeling projects. She added that she also was “intrigued” by looking at different kind of spaces, so getting involved in real estate “struck a chord” for her when she was deciding what to do after college.

She worked for various companies and met her future partner, Linda Lombardini, through real estate.

“We felt we wanted to be in a smaller company,” Smith said. “We thought we could do it better, and have our own flavor of real estate.”

Trillium was established in 2001, shortly after the 911 tragedy, and Smith said things were “quiet” for a while. Michigan’s housing market was also starting to get soft at that point, she said, and the market has only gotten tougher as the staff at Trillium have been dealing with a lot of short sales and foreclosures.

However, things have been better in Ann Arbor than in other parts of the state, she said.

“Ann Arbor has always been slightly insulated and the first to come back,” she said.

Still, the housing market has changed and shifted a lot more toward rentals, Smith said, for a variety of reasons. They may rent the house out just to keep it from becoming vacant and blighted. She said younger people are also not seeing the equity gains than earlier generations saw, and they’re less sold on the idea of owning a home.

“There’s a whole group of people more interested in not being tied down, who are willing to rent because they don’t want to do the maintenance work and they can pick up and go if the right job or the right city beckons,” she said.

As if running a real estate company isn’t enough to keep her busy, Smith serves on the Ann Arbor City Council and on the city's Downtown Development Authority board. When asked how she manages to fit all those duties in, Smith said the fact that many of her interests and passions intersect makes it all more manageable. Additionally, she both lives and works downtown. She easily walk to her office from home and to her meetings from her office.

“I live downtown, three blocks from my office, and I walk most of the time,” she said. “It’s just another three blocks in another direction to city council or five blocks to the DDA office. A lot of what we do is along the same lines: growing Ann Arbor, making sure it’s healthy.”

She said her knowledge of real estate helps with her government duties, and, in turn, she can bring what she learns from city council and the DDA back to her real estate clients.

“I bring my knowledge back and share it with clients here,” she said. “It can help sell or rent houses and help people who are new to town (get oriented).”

Smith recently won the primary for her city council seat and has a couple of goals for a second term.

“One exciting project is the North Main corridor,” she said. “We’re looking at ways we can improve that from a variety of standpoints. It’s a major gateway into town but it doesn’t represent Ann Arbor very well.”

She said she also wanted to make access to Washtenaw County’s Border to Border trail easier for residents of the second ward who now have to go a long way out of their way or cross a railroad track illegally to get to the trail and to Bandemere Park.

As for the future of Trillium, she said she’s looking forward to growth and has updated Trillium’s building to make it easy to add new staff when the housing market improves. Growth will be in small increments, though.

“It’s never going to be a 100-person office,” she said. “We’ll always be small. But it’s a neat space and a good location that sets us up for the future.”

Background

Age: 47.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in psychology, University of Michigan.

Family: Partner of 15 years, Linda Lombardini.

Residence: Downtown Ann Arbor.

Business Insights

Best business decision: Buying our building in Kerrytown.

Worst business decision: Renting for too long.

Best way to keep a competitive edge: Reading a broad array of material.

How do you motivate people? Create clear goals and expectations, and then get out of the way.

What advice would you give to yourself in college? Follow your passion.

First Web site you check in the morning: Ann Arbor.com.

Confessions

What keeps you up at night? Our cat, Morticia.

Guilty pleasure: Beer.

First job: Gopher for my Dad’s business.

First choice for a new career: Urban planner.

Treasures

Favorite cause: LGBT rights.

Favorite book: “Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett.

Favorite hobby: Brewing beer.

Favorite restaurant: Zingerman’s.

LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter? Facebook.

Typical Saturday: Farmer’s market, time at the office, dinner with friends.

What team do you root for? Detroit Tigers.

Wheels: 2000 Chevy Venture, ‘97 Pontiac Firebird, ‘63 Chevy Corvette.

Sarah Rigg is a freelance writer and a frequent contributor to AnnArbor.com. You can reach her at sarahrigg@yahoo.com.