Truckee and Lake Tahoe Real Estate: Inside the Market with Christy Morrison of Home and Slate
Updated: Sep 30
Christy Morrison has sold more than 1,000 homes in the Tahoe Truckee area over the past 26 years, and today she runs Home and Slate Real Estate, a brokerage serving Truckee, Tahoe, and Northern Nevada.
I recently had Christy on the Reno-Tahoe Real Estate Insider podcast, and she shared her story, how she helps buyers and sellers, what she offers agents, and her take on where the market is headed this fall. Here are the highlights.
From Ski Racer to Real Estate Agent
Christy's connection to this area started early. Her family moved to Truckee when she was 13 because she wanted to be a ski racer. She skied for the Squaw Valley team in high school, attended Squaw Valley Academy, and fell in love with the region.
After graduating from the University of Vermont with an environmental studies degree, she came back and worked as a ski instructor at Boreal. When money got tight, her father, a real estate investor, suggested she get her license and help him sell some apartments in Texas so the family could reinvest in Reno.
Her first deal was not a small one. The family bought a high-rise in downtown Reno and converted it into condos, and Christy, fresh with her license, sold a 96-unit condo project. As she put it, she jumped in and started selling real estate at scale right away. She still runs her family's multifamily operations in Reno today, which have grown to close to 4,500 units.
Riding Every Market Cycle in Tahoe Truckee
What I found most valuable in our conversation was Christy's perspective on how the Tahoe Truckee market has changed over the decades.
She sold through the boom of 2005 through 2007, then worked heavily in short sales and foreclosures after the crash. For years afterward, the market grew slowly, around one to three percent a year. She told me she was still helping clients sell homes at a loss in 2015 through 2017 because they had bought at the peak.
Then COVID hit, and Tahoe changed almost overnight. Christy described it as the area shifting from a secondary market to a primary home market, with values doubling and even tripling. Because she had spent years building systems to sell at volume, she was ready for it.
One point she made stuck with me. Selling second homes is uniquely challenging. A friend of hers compared it to selling a boat: no one has to own a second home, and most people don't really want to sell theirs because it's their happy place. That emotional side is a big part of the job up here.
Why She Started Home and Slate Real Estate
Christy had worked at five or six different brokerages over her career. Her most recent was Corcoran Global Living, which went bankrupt, and that pushed her to ask a bigger question about what agents actually need.
Her observation was that success really comes down to what an individual agent does with their client base. She never leaned on a brokerage much. Instead, she sought out the best trainers she could find and built her own brand.
So she built the kind of brokerage she would have wanted: one designed for productive agents, with a strong tech stack for their database and marketing, and tools that help listings reach the widest possible audience. Home and Slate officially launched in 2024, and today the team includes 12 agents in the Tahoe Truckee area and five in Reno and Sparks.
How Christy Helps Buyers and Sellers
For sellers, Christy's goal is to make the process as easy and drama-free as possible. That matters a lot in a second-home market where many owners live elsewhere. Some clients want to come up and sort through their belongings themselves, and others simply say, "Christy, you handle it." Her team has stagers, haulers, and everyone else needed to get a home ready without the owner being there.
She also emphasized how important positioning is right now. With Zillow and Redfin everywhere, she believes a home needs to be positioned to sell within 30 to 45 days. If it isn't, it gets lost among the listings that linger.
For buyers, she focuses on finding exactly what someone wants, whether that's a view, ski-in ski-out access, proximity to Tahoe Donner amenities, or even a place to board a horse right out the back door, which she pointed out is actually possible in Tahoe Donner. She also has systems for uncovering off-market properties when the right home isn't listed.
What Agents Get at Home and Slate
Christy is clear that Home and Slate is not a hobbyist brokerage. The agents who thrive there share two things: a real desire to grow their business, and a heart-centered approach that puts clients first.
For agents who bring those values, she offers a roadmap to a duplicatable, profitable business. Her goal is to help them reach in five years or less what took her 20.
Coaching is a big part of that. Christy was a Mike Ferry trained agent for her first 15 years at $1,000 a month, which works out to roughly $180,000, before counting seminars and events. Her agents now go through coaching based on their production level. Top producers join a top 20% mastermind group with agents across the country, while newer agents go through foundational training so they're confident working with clients.
I'm a big believer in coaching in any career, and I think this is one of the strongest parts of what she's built. Newer agents aren't left on an island. They have a sounding board and a community of agents who support each other. Christy also made a point I hadn't considered: working with a newer agent who is well supported can actually be an advantage for buyers, because they are hungry, responsive, and eager to answer every question.
The Truckee, Tahoe, and Reno Market Right Now
Christy shared a detailed picture of the current market. Early this year, rates were coming down and January was unusually active for what's normally the slowest month. Then geopolitical events and inflation concerns slowed things down, and listings started taking longer to sell, closer to how the market behaved before COVID.
Now, activity is picking back up. A few factors are driving it:
Talk of a big winter. Buyers want to be in a home before the snow arrives.
Seasonal timing. September is traditionally one of the highest escrow months in the area, as buyers who didn't find something over the summer get serious.
Strength in specific price ranges. In Tahoe Donner, homes between $2 million and $3 million have been more active than Christy has ever seen, often selling in under 30 days.
Luxury activity returning. After a quiet summer, communities like Lahontan and Schaffer's Mill are seeing more sales.
She also wondered whether new wealth from AI companies and upcoming IPOs could add demand for second homes in Tahoe. I think it will.
And if you've been thinking about coming up to look at homes, Christy made a great case for doing it now. The crowds are gone, the traffic is light, the days are warm, the nights are crisp, and the lakes are quiet. It's one of my favorite times of year up here too.
Connect with Christy Morrison
Whether you're buying or selling in the Tahoe Truckee area or you're an agent exploring a move to Home and Slate Real Estate, you can find Christy and her team on the Home and Slate website below:
About the Author
I'm Shay Phillips, a mortgage loan officer with Mortgage Upside, powered by NEXA Mortgage, based in Incline Village, NV on the north shore of Lake Tahoe. I help buyers relocating to Reno, Lake Tahoe, and the surrounding area finance their homes both in California or Nevada. I have a finance degree and an accounting background, and I host the Moving to Reno-Tahoe Podcast and run MovingToRenoTahoe.com. If you're planning a move, you can reach me at mortgageupside.com.
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