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Nancy Richards was working for a real estate company when she recognized a need in the industry: a firm that provided asset management service for single-family residential portfolios and small commercial properties. She felt so strongly about it that, when her employer passed on the idea, Richards started her own business.

First Preston HT opened in Dallas in 1988 with plans to secure 700 properties in its first year. By the end of the year, however, the company had blown past that goal with more than 7,000 properties in inventory. Today, it manages 35,000 assets annually with a vendor network of 7,500 appraisers, listing brokers and property management professionals.

These days, people tend to pay attention when Richards has a new business idea.

“Our industry is so fraught with problems,” she said. “But if you are a creative person, you can be very creative with problem solving, and that is very energizing.”

In the late ‘80s, as residential REO inventory began to shrink, Richards launched a home rental management business, working with Fortune 500 companies to manage and lease homes of executives who had been transferred overseas.

Richards then identified a new opportunity with the federal government. Joe McCloskey was director of single-family housing for the Federal Housing Administration for many years before retiring. He worked with Richards when First Preston was chosen as one of the companies to handle marketing and management of the FHA’s outsourced single-family properties.

“Nancy looks at problems and sees opportunities,” said McCloskey, senior vice president of development for Dimont and Associates. “She anticipates trends ahead of time and that’s hard to do in today’s economic environment.”

Richards, as CEO of First PrestonHT, organized hundreds of small, diverse businesses across the U.S. to win large privatization contracts for federal portfolios. Her team became one of the biggest privatization contractors for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, managing and selling as many as 40,000 properties annually.

Richards saw the need for a better way to manage large portfolio volumes and for an electronic marketplace with management functionality, so she started a real estate technology company, HomeTelos.

“We would have purchased the software we needed, but it didn’t exist,” she said.

As the housing industry fights its way through the current economic woes, Richards said one big obstacle to improvement is fragmented agendas.

“The government, financial institutions and private industry can have different agendas which make solving complex problems difficult without collaboration,” Richards said.

“Teaming and collaborating with parties at all levels is extremely important before any program or change is implemented. Secondly, working to preserve the dignity of the process and the dignity of all of the people involved with the process is critical. Finally, Washington must take steps to continue to foster entrepreneurship. Historically, entrepreneurship has always been the key to reducing unemployment.”

Richards believes entrepreneurs are the key to strengthening the economy, and she puts her efforts and money into supporting entrepreneurship. One example is the Values and Ventures Program at the Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University. “Nancy was the impetus for the program and she supports it,” said Brad Hancock, director of the Neeley Entrepreneurship Center.

The program includes an invitation-only business plan competition — with a twist — for students from top business schools.

“You can’t come to this competition with just your standard old business plan,” Hancock said. “You have to demonstrate how your business will serve the community. Nancy also wants people who might be interested in investing in the businesses to be there too.”

Richards said she tries to give meaningful advice to anyone wanting to pursue a real estate career.

“When anyone asks me for advice about going into this business, I tell them that it’s very important to surround yourself with bright, creative people who want to succeed. Partnership is critical, because, otherwise, you will not have the synergy to maintain a superior level of performance.”

“Nancy Richards … makes strategic and personally significant investments to benefit women and girls,” said Roslyn Dawson Thompson, president and CEO of the Dallas Women’s Foundation. “Her example has inspired other women leaders, not only within our foundation and community but across the country.”