Stephen Mahan

I'm Stephen Mahan, a real estate agent with Hunt Real Estate, ERA, and I've been in this business going on four years now, serving buyers and sellers across Baldwinsville, Syracuse, and the rest of Central New York. I actually looked into buying my first home around age 21, tired of renting, and ran straight into how expensive and overwhelming the process was. Like a lot of people my age, I figured homeownership just wasn't in the cards for me. Then COVID hit, I had to switch careers, and I realized this was an industry where I could actually help people avoid that same feeling.

Before real estate, I was a regional manager for Far Shot Recreation, a Canadian axe-throwing company expanding into the U.S. I opened their Syracuse and Albany locations and was in the middle of opening a third in Worcester, Massachusetts, when COVID made group activities in confined spaces a hard business to run. It's not the typical path into real estate, but it taught me how to build something from scratch in a new market, which turns out to matter a lot when you're helping someone navigate one too.

I've also worked for a contractor estimating repairs on bank-owned properties, for a roofing company, and in insurance, so I bring a genuinely well-rounded point of view to every transaction. I know what to look out for in a home that most first-time buyers wouldn't think to ask about, and that background has saved my clients real money and real headaches more than once.

Showings are my favorite part of the job. Walking someone through an empty space and helping them see what it could actually look like, and what their future could look like in it, never gets old for me.

I'm originally from Oswego, and I've lived in Baldwinsville for about eight or nine years now, so I know both communities well, along with the towns in between. My style with clients is personal: I want to know not just what you're looking for, but why. What your goals are, what your plans look like, what you want your future to be, so I can actually match you with the right property instead of just the right price range. I run a thorough first meeting, then keep things relaxed for the rest of the process, because by that point we're already on the same page.

Outside of work, I play a lot of D&D, read a lot of fantasy novels, and travel every chance I get, up and down the East Coast, through the Midwest and Canada, and as far as Germany, Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Bermuda. I'm still decent at axe throwing, knife throwing, and archery from my Far Shot days, and I use the outdoor archery range at Onondaga Lake Park most summers. (Fun fact: I'm actually related to Wild Bill Hickok.) You can also usually find me at Three Lives in Clinton Square on Monday nights for trivia, I've been going for about three years now, so the regulars know me by name at this point.