Signature: Beth Hansen

Age: 84

Hometown: Baton Rouge

Title: Real Estate Agent, ERA Sterling Properties

Okay, so it may be impolite to discuss a lady’s age. But you can’t help it when you’re talking about Beth Hansen because there simply aren’t that many real estate agents hustling around town at 84 years of age.

By all accounts, Hansen is still going strong—both physically and as a real estate professional. But there’s a lot more to Hansen than the fact that she’s an octogenarian Realtor. They’ve been writing stories about this lady since way before her age became of interest, and there’s a good reason for that: Beth Hansen has a positive attitude.

She also has a very progressive outlook and is easily a generation ahead of her time. She works while her healthy and supportive 82-year-old husband, Bob, handles things on the home front. “He’s my house husband,” she says. “And while I’m out working, he does all the cooking and the chores for me.”

Hansen seems quite pleased with this. Indeed, she’s very proud of her situation and of her many accomplishments. She is lively and animated when she talks about her life, something she is accustomed to doing. And with a sing-song voice and expressive eyes, she seems far younger than her 84 years. “I’ve had the most interesting life of anybody I know,” she says. “I’m just into everything.”

Hansen is into real estate—she’s been a top performer many times during her 35 years in the business, and still does a respectable $2 million-plus a year as an agent at ERA Sterling Properties. She is into gardening, with a membership in two local garden clubs, and a picture-perfect garden behind her Broadmoor home.

She’s also into learning. As a member of the group Elder Hostel, she and Bob travel to exotic places like Turkey and Costa Rica to study. “It’s like school for old people,” she says.

Hansen has always put family first and didn’t even embark on her real estate career until the early 1970s after her two daughters were grown. But she’s a natural at it.

“When a woman is buying a house, she needs someone to laugh with her and cry with her,” Hansen says. “It’s a very emotional experience, and I’m good at that.”

Hansen debunks the notion that real estate agents have to be cutthroats and work every night and weekend to succeed.

“I’ve never worked weekends unless I absolutely have to,” she says. “I’ve always started at 9:30 in the morning and knocked off around 4:30—although these days it’s more like 2:30.”

That’s about the extent of Hansen slowing down a little, but she’s still in the game, colleagues say. She’s in the enviable position of only having to work as much as she wants to, and is “selectively busy,” says Dorsey Peek, who worked with Hansen in the 1980s. “We should all be more like Beth.”

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