Tarrytown is the heart of Austin’s luxury real estate market, a hilly Eden of tree-lined cul-de-sacs just minutes from Lake Austin. If you’re lucky enough to own a home there, there’s a good chance you bought it from Kumara Wilcoxon.
All across Tarrytown (and Westlake and Travis Heights and anywhere else where a boat slip comes standard), Wilcoxon scores huge prices by fixating on the small things.
Wilcoxon, a top agent with Kuper Sotheby’s International Realty, has sold more than $1.6 billion of homes throughout her career and has been the city’s top-selling agent for the past three years. In 2022, she topped the Austin Business Journal’s annual list, recording $359 million in sales across 77 closings.
She is also a member of Austin’s Elite 25, a club of the city’s leading 0.25 percent of agents who meet monthly to swap tips over lunch.
In December, as Wilcoxon paced around a Tarryhill Place listing, no detail risked oversight: Was the lighting too low? When would those pesky leaves be fished out of the pool? Would the children’s Christmas decorations on the walls look out of place by the time this article ran in January?
She dressed with equal attention to detail. Her kelly green suit matched her eyes, while her gold heels and necklace complemented her wavy blonde hair. Diamonds studded the serifs in her necklace’s “K” pendant.
Wilcoxon finished priming the living room before she explained each step on her winding path to the top. Even from that perch, the child actor-turned-newscaster-turned-salesperson-turned superbroker still wants to climb higher. She talked about her barefoot childhood in Malibu, growing up alongside her clients and how motherhood changed her outlook.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Birthday: September 19
Hometown: Malibu, California
Lives: Austin, Texas
Family: Husband and two sons named Jet and Cruz
What does your name mean?
Kumara is East Indian. My parents called me their Buddha child. My mom says that I popped out of the womb saying “Buddha.” My middle name was actually Indra.
The holy Sanatkumara comes from the Vedas. It’s not really a female name in India. It kind of goes back to the Kumaras [four sages] as the gods in the universe. And then Indra, my middle name, was like the lord of the universe.
No pressure.
Yeah, so my name is Kumara Indra. I have a full-blown East Indian name, which is hilarious and amazing, but you know, my parents were really spiritual hippies.
Where were you born?
I grew up in Malibu. I was born and raised on the beach, and it was really old Malibu: very hippie, laid-back and casual. We were barefoot and went to the beach every day. It was just a really amazing childhood and kind of simple and carefree.
“There have been so many deals where I have been very clear: ‘If you want it, I support you, and let’s go get it done. But at this price, you’re overpaying.’”
Kind of sounds like old Austin, in a way.
Yeah, it does. It’s very similar to Austin, how it was. And now Malibu is also very fancy and has all the chic couture stores, but it still has that beachy vibe.
When I was a teenager, we moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I was trying to get back to California immediately after college, but I ended up at the University of Arizona.
I was a media arts major, and I wanted to be a TV host.
I interned with Fox. My options were, if I really wanted to start as a reporter, to start in a terrible town making like $15,000 a year. I just didn’t want to start there. I wanted to start at the top, and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice.
I didn’t like the murders and the fires and all the negativity that the news is about. I would go after these stories, and they’re telling me, “Chase that guy down and interview him — he just lost his child.” And I just wanted to cry.
So I went back to L.A., and the first thing they tell you is to start at a talent agency and work your way up from the mailroom. So I’m an agent’s assistant in Beverly Hills, and it was just brutal. I looked at the industry and was like, “Is this really what I want to do?” I listened to the agents on the phone and how badly they treated everyone: the backstabbing, the things people were saying behind each other’s backs. I had a dream to be Katie Couric on the morning show or something, but not trying to work my way up to it.
Did you picture yourself selling homes?
Never in a million years. In fact, when my mother first told me that this is what I should do, I was like, “You’ve got to be kidding. I didn’t come this far and go to school to sell houses.”
I had some friends that had moved to Austin. I was miserable at this talent agency, and they said I should just come check it out. I got a job offer with a tech company that was hiring like crazy. They wanted to train young people, just out of college, for sales.
I remember the stock split like three times when I started. I’m 21, and I’m thinking I might be wealthy when I’m 25. Sure enough, a year and a half went by and the tech bust happened. You’re sitting in your cubicle wondering when you’re gonna get the tap on the shoulder, like, “You’re laid off.”
I spent a year soul-searching and figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. I was wallowing, and I went through all my stock and my unemployment.
I went home to visit my mom, and while she drove me back to Austin, she made me listen to Carleton Sheets’ real estate investment tapes. She drove me straight to the Austin Institute of Real Estate. She was like, “You’re getting your license.”
What’s been the trick to making this career stick?
I’ve really busted my ass. I mean, people always ask, “What’s your secret?” It’s my work ethic. People sometimes underestimate Realtors. I think people underestimate how tirelessly we work and how we’re on 24/7.
Do you have any regrets about it?
I don’t regret anything, because I love what I do, and my clients and the relationships that I’ve built.
The life-work balance, it’s hard. I struggle as a mother, hoping that I’m doing the right thing and spending enough time with my children. They are the most important thing in my life. I can’t always be present when I have my clients calling, but I also hope that I’m teaching them the value of having a work ethic, and that they see a working mom.
I love them so much, and I think love is the answer to everything. I try hard to give them as much as I can, but I can’t always be there with how demanding this job is. So hopefully, they’ll turn out okay.
It’s hard to break into a new market. How’d you get started?
I briefly worked for this woman I called the Lone Shark. Her name was Darrell Kirkland, and she had been in the business for 35 years. I had been referred to her out of real estate school. I didn’t want to do what everyone else does, which is go to Keller Williams and get sales training.
So I go meet with Darrell, and she’s like, “I don’t want to hire anyone. I don’t want to work with anyone. But I want you to work for me.”
So next thing you know, I’m with this lady, and she’s driving around with me in her Mercedes teaching me the neighborhoods. She let me put my rider sign on her signs in Clarksville. People would call me thinking it was my listing. Then I’d go show it. That’s how I met all my first clients.
Was there a moment when you decided real estate was the right career for you?
It was when I had my first child. He’s 10 now.
Before that, I had worked for a small boutique company called Van Heuven Properties [after Darrell Kirkland]. When I started there, I was super-young, and no married couple in Westlake was going to choose a young person to sell them a home with their kids. They’re going to choose the established agent whose kid is friends with their son in school.
Van Heuven was kind of known as the condo guy, and I thought, “OK, that could work.” It was more of that techy, young demographic living downtown at the time. I built my business with that target market in mind.
Then slowly, those people would get married and want to buy a house, so I was bringing buyers to houses in places like Pemberton, Tarrytown and Westlake.
I was still with this brand that was known for downtown condos. That was when I felt like it was time for me to make a shift. I had always thought maybe I’d end up back in California — maybe Austin’s not for me. Do I really want to sell houses forever?
But when my first son was six months old, I thought, “OK, I’m with a Texan. I have a Texas baby. I guess I’m not going back to California.”
“I’m with a Texan. I have a Texas baby. I guess I’m not going back to California.”
Luxury sales are part art, part science. You’re dealing with successful people who are used to making decisions based on data, but homebuying is notoriously emotional. How do you balance both sides of the deal?
It’s about being in tune with your clients and what their goals are. Because if they’re in love with the home, and they want it to make it happen, I’m going to be super-honest and educate them on what I think it’s really worth. There’s no exact comp, right?
If the seller is not willing to go down, and the buyer really wants it, it’s like, how much do you want it? Will you be disappointed if you lose it? There’ve been so many deals that I’ve done where I have been very clear: “You are overpaying. If you want it, I support you, and let’s go get it done. But at this price, you’re overpaying.”
It is about data, but it’s not always about data. A lot of times, it’s about making the deal happen if that’s what the parties want. One of my biggest strengths is an intuition that I have around people. It’s an art. If you just studied the numbers all day long, you would go nuts trying to figure out exactly what something’s worth.
New wealth has poured into Austin in recent years. In a business that is so heavily based on referrals and word of mouth, how do you keep your network up to date?
It’s always good to stay social, even though sometimes I just want to go hide and just be with my kids. Every time I drag myself out to go to a charity event or a gala, or to support a friend’s — you know — whatever their initiative is, I always meet someone.
Just yesterday, I got a call from someone that I connected with at F1 [the Formula One Grand Prix race]. It’s going to turn into an Austin listing.
Do you use AI?
Sometimes if we’re trying to tweet something out quickly, it’s nice to have. My little sister’s a top mergers and acquisitions attorney, and she was doing my write-ups. Eventually, she was like, “OK, come on, I’m really busy.” So I’ve been using a little bit of AI on that, or at least my marketing girls have.
How do you think AI and other new technologies will change what it is to be a broker?
There’s just so much value to someone on the ground that technology can never really take over. Like, sure, with Zillow or Redfin, it’s easy as a buyer to go make a transaction with a seller and maybe cut the agent out. Particularly in a market like Austin, where so much is private, if you don’t have an experienced agent who has the data, you’re really flying blind, and you can’t access the properties like the one we’re sitting in today.
It’s also really hard to negotiate directly. There’s a reason there’s a broker in the middle. There’s so much emotion and there’s so much craziness that goes on that I think it’s hard for that to ever really go away.
You’ve been the top-selling agent in Austin for the last three years in a row. Do you ever think of slowing down and enjoying the view for a bit?
I’ve asked that myself, “Can’t you slow down? Can’t you take a break? You’re at the top.” But I can’t — it’s in my blood. It’s in my nature.
Growing up, my father was an entrepreneur. He had a lot of success, and then there was a lot of failure. I was also raised by an amazing mother, who basically raised the four of us alone, because my father was in Europe starting companies. I saw it was a lot of work. And you know, I think I just have this drive to be successful.