In Vermont, they join family members in North Hero hunting waterfowl with Gunner, their chocolate Lab. Barb is heading to Maine this fall to be filmed as a woman hunting bear, which is to appear on an outdoors TV show.
The outdoor life is serious stuff for the Trousdales. Knowing that helps explain why they expanded their South Burlington residential real estate company, Attacca Realty, to purchase the rights to the northern and southern Vermont territories from Cabela’s Trophy Properties. This is the division of their business called Vermont Outdoor Properties, launched early in 2010 to market what they call country homes or lifestyle specialy homes such as camps, lakefront property, and country gentleman farms.
Neither of them planned on a career in real estate. Curtis grew up in Weston, Mass., and, wanting to study engineering, chose the University of Vermont.
“By the end of my sophomore year I decided I didn’t want to be a mechanical engineer, but an architect,” he says. He earned a degree in architectural engineering technology from Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston.
Just out of college, he was recruited by an IBM contractor called CDI, which specialized in computer-aided design (CAD). It brought him back to Vermont.
Curtis’ job hunt led him to a company called Softdesk out of Henniker, N.H., “a highly innovative CAD software design company.” Hired to do tech support on a program called Auto-Architect, he was soon moved to a position where he was traveling throughout the country teaching architects and engineers how to use the software and integrate it on their networks.
He had married a few years earlier, and living in New Hampshire was difficult for his then-wife — a Vermont native he met in 1991. They returned to Vermont, where he was hired by Champlain Computer Systems, d/b/a Computerland, which wanted to open a computer training center. They were divorced in 1996.
Panurgy was a multifaceted company that did network integration. “We sold hardware and software and had a very large training center.” Panurgy absorbed — “purchased is too much of a word,” he quips — several companies, the largest of which was New Horizons Computer Training Center.
Attacca Realty had its roots in the Trousdales’ desire to see each other once in a while.
In North Carolina, Barb studied bookkeeping. “I worked for an income tax agency during tax season and did some year-round bookkeeping for his clients,” she says.
When her husband’s term was up, they returned to North Hero, built a home on land her parents had given them, and started a family. Barb worked part time at the Chittenden Bank in Alburgh, then left to open her own bookkeeping business.
Along the way, she decided to run for town clerk on the basis of her computer abilities, which she says were sorely needed in the town office. She lost to the incumbent.
“Because I ran an upright campaign,” says Barb, “when she had an assistant who was not able to provide the reports the select board needed, she interviewed and hired me.” That was 1995, the year she met Curtis.
Barb needed additional training with the town’s Access and Excel programs. One of the select board members suggested she call Curtis, who was then at Computerland.
In 1997, when the town clerk retired, Barb again ran and was elected for a three-year term. She divorced in 1998.
They interviewed with Chenette Real Estate in South Burlington and decided it was a good fit. She started in January and, after Curtis obtained his license in April, they worked as the Trousdale Team until they launched Attacca in January 2008.
“Attacca,” says Barb, “is a classical music term that means ‘the immediate and fluid transition between two movements of a symphony.’” They liken the analogy to creating a quick and stress-free transition in real estate.
“Attacca, our residential division, has been very successful and shown great, consistent, continued growth,” says Curtis. Since becoming participants of Cabela’s Trophy Properties and launching Vermont Outdoor Properties, Barb’s focus has been the residential division, and Curtis concentrates on the new division.
The company operates from the Trousdales’ basement, which they have transformed into offices, replete with a conference room, bathroom, tiny kitchen area, and shared office space for employees, except for Barb, whose office is on the second floor.
Little, Ferrara, and Bergeron work in the residential division; Wrobel works for Attacca Realty and is an official Cabela’s Trophy Properties agent.
Although hunting consumes much of their spare time, the Trousdales are generous with their expertise. Curtis is treasurer of the Northwestern Vermont Board of Realtors and serves on various subcommittees. Barb chairs the professional standards committee. She’s also vice president of the Colchester chapter of Business Networking International, and chairs the education committee for the Remodelers Council of the Home Builders and Remodelers Association.
They were the first agents in many years to teach the real estate portion of home-buying workshops for Champlain Housing Trust, says Barb, who uses her town clerk experience to thoroughly research a property before recommending a price. She has recently studied mediation techniques, which she’s putting to work facilitating disputes as the HBRA professional standards chair.
Four independent Realtors work in the office. Mike Wrobel (left) works for Attacca Realty and is an official Cabela’s Trophy Properties agent; Todd Bergeron and Theresa Ferrara work in the residential division.