ATR Properties, Inc.

A strategic career change in 1991 set Geri Stephens on a new path to success in commercial real estate and a thriving business in vacation rental property management. As a self-described “local girl,” she realizes that she’s come a long way.

Beginning her career at the bottom of the banking industry in 1972, over the course of the next 17 years, she worked for multiple financial institutions. Then in 1991, she had the opportunity to work in commercial leasing and got her first real estate license. After working with many commercial projects, including opening new Safeway stores, she later joined Action Team Realty as an escrow coordinator, closing more than 100 escrows per year, she says.

“When the owners retired in 1999, I seized upon the opportunity to purchase the property management portion that the owners and I had started. I‘ve spent the past 11 years building the business from 50 clients to its present inventory 
of about 130.”

ATR Properties is now located in the Kopiko Plaza shopping center, which she helped open years before. Her office there is unique. “I have to chuckle sometimes when people walk through the door and think that they accidentally walked into a florist shop,” she says. “My passion for orchids is particularly evident throughout the office.”

ATR Properties has faced many of the same challenges as other small businesses. But Geri has now survived two recessions and says the business is going strong.

“However, I suppose that my biggest personal challenge was to sustain a successful business as a local girl,” says Geri, who grew up in Kaimuki on O‘ahu. “It can be really tough for anyone trying to succeed with a small business, but for me as a woman, it sometimes can produce extra challenges in gaining acceptance as a real player.”

Geri recently received recognition as a Master Property Manager by the National Association of Residential Property Managers. She is one of only two in the state of Hawai’i to hold the designation.

ATR Properties handles not only vacation rentals, but long-term rentals as well. “In fact,” Geri says, “that has been a strategy for many of my owners to help offset the downturn in tourism.”

Geri’s daughter Angel began working with ATR in 2001. “She received her broker’s license in 2009 at the ripe old age of 24. That makes me feel really good knowing that this little business I started has not only become a family business but is destined to continue for years to come.”

ATR Properties, Inc.

75-5660 Kopiko St. #A5, Kailua-Kona
808.329.6020