Boomer Foster launches Paul Wesley Real Estate brokerage

As a child Boomer Foster, the nephew of Long & Foster co-founder Wesley Foster, wrote three goals on a scrap of paper in crayon:

• Play in the NFL
• Practice law with his dad
• Be president of Long & Foster

“I was too slow for the NFL, but I played football all four years at University of South Carolina, and my dad passed away before I got the opportunity to practice with him, but I guess there was always something in the back of my mind about real estate,” said Foster, who still has that scrap of paper. 

After practicing law for nearly a decade, Foster made the pivot to real estate, thanks to a call from his ‘Uncle Wes.’

“In the early 2000s, my Uncle Wes started calling to see if I was interested in joining the family business,” Foster said. “Now I had two heroes growing up — one was my dad and the other was my Uncle Wes, so when he called it was a hard thing to say no to.” 

Foster started in the business as an agent before moving into management and eventually becoming the president of the firm in 2014. He left the brokerage in 2023 in a corporate reshuffle.

“He started me from the ground up and helped me learn the business from all sides and that was a great way to come through because I know what it’s like to be an agent and how to run an office,” Foster said. 

Through all of this, Foster said his Uncle Wes was an incredible source of support, mentorship and inspiration.

“My Uncle Wes came from nothing,” Foster said. “My grandparents were dirt farmers south of Atlanta and he went to the Virginia Military Institute on a football scholarship, but he still had to do things like work in the cafeteria to get by. It was out of pure determination, grit and surrounding himself with the right people that he was able to build Long & Foster.” 

Foster said one of the greatest lessons he learned from his uncle was that if you take care of people everything else takes care of itself. 

“He believed in prioritizing relationships, prioritizing service and being a servant leader,” Foster said. “He felt like he worked for everybody at the company and really set an example for me and set a standard I have tried to emulate throughout my career.” 

Continuing the family legacy

The latest place Foster is working to apply these lessons from ‘Uncle Wes’ is at his newly launched independent brokerage Paul Wesley Real Estate, which is named after his father Paul and his Uncle Wes. 

Foster said his decision to launch his own brokerage came because he feels that it is currently hard to find a brokerage that still values relationships and service the way his Uncle Wes did. 

“There is a gap in the industry as so many companies are putting their own profit and loss statements over the consumer and that was a gap I wanted to try to fill,” Foster said. 

Despite his desire to fill this perceived void in the industry, Foster acknowledged that it is a challenging time in the industry for smaller firms, especially with the backdrop of massive industry consolidation. However, he feels this wave of consolidation is why the industry needs small independent companies like his. 

“When you look at these big companies and leaders, they are beholden to shareholder calls and a board of directors that is pushing them to find ways to make more and more money and unfortunately, in a lot of situations, I think that is coming on the backs of the consumer,” Foster said. “If you look at some of the initiatives that are all over the industry news and that everyone is fighting about, it’s clear that the consumer is being put on the back burner as compared to company profitability and I think that is a huge problem.” 

Creating an alternative

A desire to create an alternative to this for both agents and consumers is why Foster said he decided to jump back into the industry. Although opening the firm in April, in the middle of the spring selling season, posed some challenges as many agents don’t want to change firms during such a busy season, Foster said things are going well for his fledgling company, which currently serves clients in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. 

“I had a plan of where we were going to open and what I am seeing is that a lot of that plan is taking effect, but we are also pivoting to where we are seeing people swimming towards us and getting excited about who we are and we didn’t expect that to happen,” Foster said. 

So far, this has led Foster to explore expanding the brokerage into Delaware, West Virginia, North Carolina and potentially into New Jersey and Pennsylvania. 

“It has been pretty amazing to see all of the people who decided to uproot their business in the middle of the spring market,” he said. “We only started onboarding agents in April, and we already have close to $250 million in production from about 30 agents. It has been amazing to have this many great agents and great people want to be a part of what we are doing.” 

A company with values

Looking ahead, Foster said he hopes to create a company that has values and can provide agents with a sense of belonging.

“I want to create a place where character, integrity and honor really mean something, and I hope to attract people who are as passionate and obsessive about the consumer experience as I am and as the agents we already have,” Foster said. “But, at the end of the day, I am not getting caught up in how big we get, I am really focused on how many people we can help and how many communities we can strengthen. You are going to have a way more fulfilled life if you are chasing smiles versus money.” 

While his journey in the industry may have been a bit unexpected given the early professional path he chose, Foster said he is glad he ended up in real estate, as he looks to carry on the legacy of his family.

“I didn’t know that I would fall in love with real estate. When I practiced law I was a trial lawyer representing big insurance companies and while the pay was good, it was not something that, when you look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day, feel like you did something good for people today,” he said. “But in real estate, regardless of what role I have taken on in the industry, I get to help people everyday and that made me fall in love with the industry because I knew I was doing right by people every single day when I go to work.”