Elena Marchetti, principal
Someone gave you my name.
Most of my work arrives that way, which means you are here to find out whether the recommendation holds. This page is the answer: where I came from, what I have closed, and how I run a sale.
Fourteen years,one coastline.
I spent eight years drafting for a residential architect before I ever took a listing, and it is still the most useful thing about me. I read a set of plans faster than I read a comp sheet.
I grew up four blocks off the river in San Marco, in a 1929 house my parents were always halfway through fixing. The drafting job came after architecture school ran out of money. Between 2004 and 2012 I detailed additions and rebuilds across Avondale, Riverside and the beaches, which means I have stood in a lot of these houses with the walls open.
I moved to the sales side in 2012 and started Marchetti Estates in 2016 with one constraint I have not broken: six to eight houses a year. It is a smaller business than I could run. It is also why I can tell you what a 1926 slab is likely to cost you before we get back in the car, and why I have never handed a client to anyone else mid-sale.
I hold a Florida broker licence, I sit on the board of a neighbourhood preservation trust, and I have walked every property on this site at three different times of day. The awkward questions are the ones I am best at answering.
Track record
The numbers,with their sources.
Production figures are easy to write and hard to check, so every one below is printed with the record it came from. If a number on an agent’s site has no source line, ask for one.
$412M
Closed sales volume
Source: NEFAR MLS, 2012 to 2025 [unverified]
148
Houses closed, First Coast
Source: NEFAR MLS, 2012 to 2025 [unverified]
23 days
Median days on market
Source: NEFAR MLS, 2024 to 2025 [unverified]
98.4%
Median sale-to-list price
Source: NEFAR MLS, 2024 to 2025 [unverified]
Method
How I work.
I write the defect list before you hire the inspector
You get my version first, in writing, including the things that will cost you money in year three. Then the inspector confirms it or corrects me. Nobody has ever been upset about a repair they knew about in week one.
I give you the number I would take, not the number you want
A listing that has to reduce twice sells for less than the honest number would have brought in the first fortnight. That conversation costs me listings. I have not found a version of this business worth having where it does not happen.
I do not run two closings in the same week
Six to eight houses a year is the whole model. It is what lets me sit in the inspection, walk the survey line and take the call at nine on a Sunday when the appraisal comes in short.
I answer my own phone
There is no team, no assistant and no transaction coordinator between you and me. The person who walked the house is the person who negotiates for it and the person who picks up eighteen months later when the seawall needs looking at.
References
In theirown words.
“She talked us out of the first house we wanted. Told us what the foundation work would cost and let us sit with it. We bought two streets over, and she was right about the number.”
“Our last agent sent a photographer and a sign. Elena spent an afternoon in the house before she would price it, then priced it lower than we asked. It went in eleven days at over ask.”
“We were buying from Chicago and saw the place on a video walkthrough she shot herself, narrating every flaw. That is the only reason we were willing to close sight unseen.”
Two waysto start.
Look at what is currently represented, or write to me directly. Enquiries come to me, not to a queue, and I answer them inside one business day.