Lance
Williams
ABOUT
After nearly a quarter-century as an Emmy Award-winning television reporter, investigating some of the toughest stories in television news, from interviewing Richard Nixon to covering devastating natural disasters, Lance Williams has spent more than a dozen years building a successful real estate career.
More than fourteen years as one of the top 1% producers in bay area real estate is the result of a passionate commitment to creative solutions, and a lifelong love of architecture. Lance's approach is distinguished by hands-on, boutique service, marked by integrity, knowledge, and experience.
Homes Are Where His Heart Is
By Elizabeth Bettendorf
A Valentine’s story for you. About a guy who loves the idea of home.
And family
About a television reporter, who stared down death and came back to savor life again, Lance Williams a reporter for WFLA-Ch, 8, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
He’s beating it thanks to a miracle drug and donated bone marrow from a young woman in Tennessee.
Williams announced his resignation at Channel 8 in January. He’s leaving to sell real estate.
It’s not a surprise that Williams leaves the news biz for the world or real estate. His south Tampa home is a homage to Williams’ and his wife Amy’s, love of antiques, art, architecture and collecting.
A Barcelona chair mixes with a collection of traditional French chairs and Regency love seats: a painting be the late, great Florida landscape painter Beanie Backus hangs in the living room.
The painting of the Adams Ranch in St. Lucie County was a going-away gift many years ago from Backus, who knew Williams when he was a reporter living in Ft. Pierce. Upstairs is a painting by Homer Johnson the Williamses picked up at a local auction for $32.
Aubusson and Oriental rugs cover the floors. A small collection of folk art hangs in the kitchen and stacks
of architecture books beckon from every surface.
Everywhere you turn, something to touch, study, think about.
Williams and his wife, soulmates in life collecting cannot help themselves when they see furniture in a trash pile or at an estate auction. They have a tendency to cart things home and create a living still life with their treasures.
“Truly home is everything to us.” Williams says, “It’s where we entertain friends, play and pray as a family, disagree and make up. We’d be lost without our haven.”
A haven
That’s what most people want, Williams says; you know where you’re supposed to live.”
When he first thought about selling real estate for a living – something he did decades ago in Miami to raise money for graduate school at Northwestern. He consulted family and friends for more than a year before finally deciding to take a leap of faith.
Williams was ready to let go of Journalism. He loved his co-worker for their daily prayer sessions when he was sick; for cooking hot meals for Amy and his two children, Palmer and Olivia; and for building a pool fence in his yard when he was too weak to get out of bed.
He gets misty-eyed when he thinks about leaving them.
It’s hard not to.
He’s giving up job security for the unknown.
Journalism has been very good to him, he says. He feels equally enamored of every interview, from Richard Nixon to the hospital housekeeper who touched his heart.
“While doing it (journalism), it absolutely consumed me. I would walk out of the house every day wondering if I could be the absolute best I could be. It’s a wonderful feeling to talk to a stranger, and, if you’re sincere, he or she will tell you their deepest thoughts and fears: he explains. “But it’s also Stressful to walk into strangers’ lives every day and work to find out the most intimate things about them.”
After nearly a quarter of a century I didn’t want to wake up and do another story about a mom who died in an accident on the Bayshore or a tornado the destroyed 20 homes.”
His last day will be April 8.
He will sell homes, havens really, in the hopes of finding people places they know in their hearts are right.
Sometimes the natural light in a house tells us that, or the way the rooms flow into one another, or how a big tree hugs a front porch with its shade. “For me the goal will no longer be what news story I crafted together today, rather what stories of homes and families will I put together in the years to? “It’s a huge risk, but I’m confident, excited and at peace.”
