Mark Shepherd spent nearly ten years foreclosing on homes before he decided he could not do it any longer. After watching family after family lose the places they lived in, and each time wearing on him a little more, he chose to step over to the other side of the work. Instead of taking people out of their homes, he started putting them into homes. That decision shaped everything that came after it. Today, Mark runs the Shepherd Real Estate Group in Layton, Utah, a company he opened in 2018 after years of building his career in the industry. Before that, he sold his RE/MAX franchise and served as the Managing Broker for Windermere Real Estate.
His work now stretches well beyond selling houses. He leads local and national housing organizations, serves his community as an elected official, and has built a reputation around one steady promise to the people he works with. In more than twenty years, he has never had a client lose a home to foreclosure or a short sale. That record is not a slogan for him. It is the result of how he chooses to do the job, one client at a time.
From Foreclosures to a Different Kind of Promise
The years Mark spent foreclosing on homes left a mark on him. He described it plainly, saying the work ate into him a little more each time he had to take someone’s house. When he made the switch to real estate, he carried that experience with him as a kind of warning. He committed to making sure his own clients never ended up house poor, and he holds himself to it. The fact that no client of his has lost a home to foreclosure or a short sale comes directly from that early chapter of his life. He knows what the other outcome looks like, and he has built his work around avoiding it.
Teaching Before Selling
A large part of Mark’s approach happens before a home is ever shown. He uses his background in finance and credit to help clients understand their own situation. He works with them to improve their credit scores, which raises their purchasing power, and only then does he go looking for the right house. For first-time buyers in particular, this matters. The market does not offer many starter homes, and there is little to choose from that fits the income of someone buying their first place. Mark sees his job as closing that gap. When the time is right, he goes out and finds the home, sometimes knocking on doors in the neighborhoods his clients want to live in.
A Mayor Who Built More Housing
Mark has served as the Mayor of Clearfield, Utah, for over twelve years. When he took office, he was told the city was already built out. He did not accept that. With a belief that “housing is infrastructure,” he fought to redevelop the city and has added more than 4,000 residential units over the past five years, a mix of apartments, condos, townhomes, and single-family homes. That work connects directly to the problem he sees every day in his real estate practice, which is a simple shortage of homes people can actually afford.
Working on the National Stage
Beyond Clearfield, Mark acts as a governmental relations liaison for a national builder, advising cities on how to work more effectively with developers. He co-chairs America’s Housing Comeback for the National League of Cities, a group that produced the Housing Supply Accelerator Playbook to help cities create housing in ways they had not considered before. He recently traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with more than seventeen members of Congress, senators, and White House staff to discuss getting a bipartisan housing bill, The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, to the finish line and signed by the President. He went to share what he sees on the ground and the real need for federal investment in housing.
Recognition Built Over Time
The awards have followed the work. Mark has been named Realtor of the Year, received the President’s Award from the Council of Residential Specialists twice, earned the Realtor Active in Politics award, and was given a Lifetime Achievement Award earlier this year. He has also served as President of the Northern Wasatch Association of REALTORS and the Utah Chapter of the Council of Residential Specialists.
What stays with you about Mark is not the list of titles. It is the quiet consistency behind them. He learned early what it costs a family to lose a home, and he has spent the years since making sure the people who trust him never have to find out.
