STEVE VALENTINE

Real Estate Agent/Strategist

Phoenix, AZ

Agent For 20+ Years
Founder of the RIG The Real Estate Investment Group

Steve Valentine is not your polished country club realtor. He is a gritty, straight shooting, wildly experienced real estate agent and strategist who feels more like a cowboy philosopher meets self made mogul than a traditional agent. Funny, blunt, deeply insightful, and impossible to forget, Steve brings an intensity and conviction that instantly commands attention. He proudly describes himself as, “a hillbilly at heart,” but behind the larger than life personality is someone who has spent nearly three decades immersed in real estate, building businesses, raising a family, surviving addiction, mentoring agents, and helping people navigate some of the most difficult financial and emotional situations of their lives.

Real estate is practically woven into Steve’s DNA. Licensed since 1999, he comes from a family of agents, including his grandmother, parents, wife, and sister. Over the course of his career, Steve has been involved in more than 10,000 transactions and averages roughly 100 homes sold every single year. He has personally bought, sold, renovated, or invested in over 1,000 homes and specializes in distressed properties, investment deals, unconventional financing structures, and complicated listings most agents would never know how to approach. Steve is also the founder of RIG, The Real Estate Investment Group, where he mentors and teaches agents how to think beyond traditional real estate sales and approach properties like strategic opportunities. To Steve, difficult homes are not problems, they are puzzles. He believes most agents fail because they only know how to list properties, not solve problems.

What makes Steve especially compelling is the way he approaches stigmatized and hard to sell homes through strategy, psychology, and creative deal structuring rather than just marketing. He constantly talks about finding, “the avatar buyer” for a property, meaning the exact type of person who would see value where everyone else sees problems. Instead of trying to appeal to the masses, Steve narrows the buyer pool intentionally and builds solutions around what is actually possible.

Some of Steve’s deals sound completely unbelievable. There was “The Stripper Pole House,” a half renovated home on a busy street with a literal stripper pole at the front door and bizarre unfinished interiors. Then there was “The Hot Dog House,” a manufactured home with so many bizarre additions that it stretched across the lot like a hot dog. Nothing was permitted, nothing qualified for financing, and most agents would have considered it unsellable. Steve instead structured a creative seller financed deal for a mother of four, ultimately creating a win for both the investor and the buyer.

What really sets Steve apart, though, is the humanity underneath the bravado. He is incredibly open about the fact that real estate nearly destroyed his life. After years of success, pressure, and nonstop hustle, Steve developed a drinking problem that began impacting his marriage and family. In 2023, he entered rehab and completely rebuilt his life through recovery. Now sober for over two and a half years, Steve openly uses his story to mentor and guide others. He believes deeply in personal growth, accountability, and helping people build lives that are “built, not bought.”