Mother-son team succeed in construction

Keith Gedamke / The Item David Mullen, left, discusses a construction project with his mother, Charlene Avant. David and his mother make up the team of Avant Construction.

By SHARYN LUCAS-PARKER
Special to The Item

"Like father, like son." That's an adage most people are familiar with. It might be time to invent a new one just for Charlene Avant and her son David Mullen.

Like his mother, Mullen is positioning himself to become one of the most successful real estate executives in the area. Avant, a real estate broker who lists and sells properties for Re/Max One Source Realty, is thought to be the only female residential builder in the Sumter area to survive the real estate and construction crunch. And at 19, Mullen is thought to be the youngest licensed builder in the area. Together, they make up Avant Construction.

In their industry, they are an oddity.

"When I was learning about the business, I had builders say to me, 'This is no place for a woman,' or 'Stick to being a Realtor. You'll never make it,'" Avant recalled. "Well, I'm here."

How the 40-year-old Sumter woman got there is a story in itself. Born in Timmonsville, her late father, Evan Jones, was a well-known brick mason. Her two brothers followed in their father's footsteps. Although she had an interest in construction and real estate, she had none for the family business.

"My thing was, I'm not going to lay bricks," she said. "I thought, 'I'm going to skip all that and go straight to the top.'"

For the first several years of her adult life, though, she was a stay-at-home mom to Mullen and his younger sister, Tiffany. A painful divorce forced her to consider her career choices. She chose law enforcement, working as a Sumter County sheriff's deputy for four years before the nagging sensation that she should be doing something else convinced her to leave.

"I was helping people and loving that," she said, "but I wanted to do bigger things. I wanted to build and make things happen."

Keith Gedamke / The Item Shown is a home being built by Charlene Avant and her son David Mullen, the mother-son team of Avant Construction.

SHOW ME THE MONEY
A lot of things have happened over the past decade. Avant, who got her college degree at 30, initially thought that she would be content to buy distressed property, renovate and resell it. But her new career was better than she had anticipated. She became a $4 million producer during 2004, her first year in real estate. By the end of the second year, she had doubled her numbers. And by the third, she ranked among the top three real estate producers in the area.

"Business was booming. I got in at the right time," she said.

Avant noticed a trend that she couldn't ignore: More and more of her customers were inquiring about presold and custom-built homes.

This meant that instead of simply selling an existing house, Avant's job would now also involve helping clients select floor plans and working alongside builders to make their dream houses on paper become a reality. For Avant, keeping up with all the details of every construction project was critical. This meant asking a lot of questions and doing walk-throughs at all stages of the work.
"I wanted to know the nuts and bolts of the business," she said. "I had my nose in everything."

But sometimes questions from a blonde who wears high heels and speaks with a Southern drawl – and her presence at a construction site – are not appreciated.

"I used to be told all the time, 'Don't worry about that,' and I'm like, 'No, I will worry about it. This is my client. If something goes wrong, the client will be looking at me. It's my job to protect the client,'" she said.

There was another issue: Money. Although she was earning commissions, in the end the builders were benefiting the most financially.

"It's not all about the money – it can't be. It's about making sure my client gets in the home he or she can afford," she said.

"But," she added, "I got to thinking about that thing. These guys, and how some of them would act, being difficult and nasty. I thought, 'I can do this. I'm doing three quarters of the work. I'm bringing them the client and I'm helping them get the financing.'

"Women love money, too, and I've got babies to feed," she said.

THE ART OF USING THE JAW
Mother and son are the developers of the White Pines subdivision off Lewis Road. The success of the development, which features 1,300-square-foot homes painted in red, gray, chocolate, blue and sage, has quieted some of the naysayers who maintained that such a project would never work in Sumter. She says she and Mullen have spotted some of those naysayers driving through their development and walking around some of their property.

"For them to come around my job, walk through my houses, it lets me know I bother them, and I am tickled to death," she said.

For Avant, work is personal.

"I've been a single mother. I came from a broken home, and we struggled," she said. "There's something about watching that first-time homebuyer or that person who has gone through a bankruptcy but gotten back on her feet get the keys to their house."

Some deals take months to close. Some deals involve the client signing a waiver that allows Avant to call lending institutions and credit bureaus on their behalf. Some deals have meant that Avant walks away from a closing without a commission.

"It's not something I advertise, but when it comes down to a family being able to close or me taking a check, I've walked away without a check," she said.

That is one of the things that Mullen says he admires about his mother.

"I've learned a lot about doing business and treating people right just from watching her," he said.

When it comes to words, Mullen is a man of few. He praises his mother for her ability to handle some of the toughest business ventures because of her acquaintance with "the art of using the jaw."

Mullen graduated from Lakewood High School in 2008 with honors and several college scholarships. He might not say much, but he is a deep thinker, his mother said. His quiet but decisive style of management might be the reason why workers 30 years his senior are respectful in their business dealings and call him "Mr. David," she said.

Avant, who teaches her 17-year-old daughter the importance of being financially independent and "not to depend on a man," said there was a brief time when she doubted her ability to succeed in a man's world.

"I realized about nine months ago that I used to have a nervous feeling about all these guys, sitting up there and thinking they are sitting on top of the world, and that they're better than me," she said. "I realize now, I'm sitting right beside them."