Russell Lands, the largest private land owner and developer of Lake Martin, Alabama, has affiliated with the national real estate company of ERA.

This is huge news.

I was flipping through the April issue of Lake Martin Living this afternoon.  I noticed a big, nice ad on page 54 from Russell Lands.  The ad cites their website as Russell Lands On Lake Martin dot com.  This caught my attention as it is a new URL. Formerly everything Russell is on Russell Lands dot com.

So I checked out their new site.  It is really nice, goes over a lot of features of Lake Martin, like the new dining at Russell Crossroads like Catherine’s Market and Springhouse Restaurant.  The site also details the many off the water activities like hiking, biking and horse riding in Russell Forest.

Then I clicked on one of the upper tabs marked “Corporate” and then on the “Affiliated Businesses.” It details out many businesses of which I am familiar like Russell Marine and Willow Point.  But the last one really caught my eye: “ERA Lake Martin Realty.” What?

Check it out.  If you click on that link, it takes you to an entirely different site – ERA Lake Martin Realty dot com.

On that site header it calls ERA Lake Martin Realty “A Russell Lands Affiliated Company.” On the page that describes the ERA Advantage, it describes ERA Lake Martin Realty as “formerly Russell Lands Real Estate.”

If you click on the “meet the agents” tab, you will see many (but not all) of the agents that have been advertised in past issues of Lake Martin Homes and Land Magazine and those listed as having their license with Russell Lands according to the Alabama Real Estate Commission.

So I guess that we have an entirely new real estate company on Lake Martin – ERA Lake Martin Realty, which is populated by many agents that were “formerly Russell Lands Real Estate.” Okay.

I think this will have a interesting impact on the Lake Martin real estate market. It will be really interesting to see how they roll out their new plans.  I will comment on the possible effects of this later, but for now, I give congratulations on the new venture; I wish the company and its agents the very best!