By: Anne DeVries
If Emily Moreland built the house, Sarah Railey has spent more than two decades making sure the foundation holds. Railey joined Moreland Properties in 2002 as Emily's assistant, fresh from college and a brief stint teaching middle school computer and PE. She has been there ever since.
"I'm honored to have been a part of over half of the company's history," she says, "and to have been a part of the growth. It's just fun to sit back and go, oh my gosh, here we are, but also where we're going."
Her path from assistant to president is its own West Austin story. Early on, Railey earned her real estate license and helped support both Emily and Eric Moreland with administrative and sales tasks, but she quickly realized that her real passion lay in developing the business itself. When a choice arose between expanding into Eric Moreland's growing operation and deepening her role at the firm, she chose to remain Emily’s assistant.
"I really gravitated towards the service side, taking care of everyone and growing the business side of it. It really was more my speed.”
Railey’s chosen focus has helped shape how Moreland Properties operates today. As president and broker of record, Railey oversees the full organizational structure, managing staff, resources, and day-to-day operations. "Every deal is a unicorn," she says. "Something will happen, and we've got to make sure all the deals close and all the clients are taken care of."
What sets Moreland Properties apart from Railey's vantage point is a deliberate choice to stay true to its West Austin roots even as the city has grown. The firm's core territory, she says, runs "inside that 360 corridor running through Westlake and past Lake Travis." The hyper-focus in these areas has developed the intimacy that only decades of working a market can produce.
That local depth, she believes, is precisely what separates Moreland from the national players moving into the Austin market. "This is a quiet, discretionary business we have in Austin," she says, "and with the city's growth, we've grown as well, but we still are kind of a small boutique of top tier with our service." The philosophy shows up in how the firm thinks about client relationships, too. "We want to be people's lifetime real estate advisor," Railey explains. "Like you've got your banker, you've got your attorney, anything real estate related, you call your Moreland agent.”
"Part of what we do is hold on to what we think is so special about Austin, and our agents feel the same way."
The family dimension of the business runs deep beyond the Moreland Family involvement. Railey, a mother of three daughters, sees that generational continuity as central to the culture. "I've got agents whose moms sold real estate here, and now their kids do," she says. "It feels like a family business, that's the only way I can describe it."
Loyalty, she adds, runs deep. The firm sees little turnover. "We all love what we have going on," Railey says. "It either draws you in, or it doesn't. Anybody who is excited about something local and has skin in the game ends up being more of a magnet. And so people tend to stick around a long time."
For a young woman considering real estate, Railey offers practical wisdom. "You really have to love every aspect," she says, "because it will be a round-the-clock focus." But passion alone is not enough. "You really have to know your market and research everything about what you love, so you can be just as knowledgeable as you are excited. Because it takes both."
As for what's next for Moreland Properties, Railey continues to forge ahead, pursuing new opportunities for Moreland, its agents, and clients, preparing for the inevitable changes companies face. With Emily easing into an advisory role and the next generation of agents stepping up, the transition has been, in her words, "a very fluid process." The goal, she says, remains what it has always been: to be the local experts that clients in Central Texas trust implicitly, in a city that keeps changing around them.
"When I think about Moreland, I think about all the amazing people that make it what it is," Railey reflects. "It is not about just one person or one idea. It's how we've all grown the company together over the last 40 years."
