South Florida real estate agent Sharon Ross, a former bass player for the American all-female rock band Vixen, is showcasing her talents on a different stage these days.
In the late 1980s glam rock era, her band produced a debut album that spawned two subsequent hit records in the United States and Europe. Vixen toured widely, and its videos were on heavy rotation on MTV, but while Ross makes it clear that she's grateful for her long music career, she speaks candidly about what that career was not.
"For every person you see who made it huge, there are probably 100 or 1,000 of us who didn't make it quite to that level," Ross told CoStar News. "If I continued to carry on traveling and doing wonderful stuff with the band, I just couldn't have paid the bills."
So in 2018, she earned her real estate license, fitting in dealmaking whenever and wherever she could, sometimes on stage during a sound check. Today, Ross, who goes by Share, is a full-time agent for the cloud-based eXp Realty, working out of her home in Boynton Beach, a booming bedroom community between Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale.
She said she averages about $10 million to $12 million in sales a year, working with individual investors on small multifamily properties, as well as families in search of first and move-up homes.
"It definitely takes a team," she said.
That team is the Rock Star Home Group.
'Really good negotiator'
Ross, friendly and self-effacing with long blonde hair and three tattoos, prefers not to disclose her exact age, saying she's over 60, "but with the attitude of a 15-year-old."
Wearing her trademark low-top Converse shoes, she spent an hour recently musing about music and real estate in the mid-century modern Boynton Beach house of her good friends and neighbors, Ric and Holly Browde.
The couple wanted to live within walking distance of Ross and her husband, Bam, so Ross found them a three-bedroom house just east of Interstate 95 on a corner lot in the largely redeveloped Chapel Hill neighborhood, a coveted destination, she said because there's no homeowner's association.
Ric, a record producer, said it was easy to buy the house with Ross as their agent. No loose ends or last-minute hang-ups, he said. And at a time when most homes in the area were selling over the asking price, Ross somehow arranged a deal for $50,000 under the $1.55 million list price.
"It's strange to see one of your best friends turn into a really good negotiator," Ric said. "She nailed it. And as a person, she's the most reliable friend you can ever have."
Minnesota native
Ross was born and raised in Lakeville, Minnesota, a small town south of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Her father was an executive, and her mother was a musician. Their daughter gravitated toward the latter.
She moved to Los Angeles when she was 22 and became a session player, filling in whenever a group needed a bass player. That led to her becoming a bass player for singer Helen Reddy, with whom she toured the world for about four years.
In 1987, she joined Vixen. The next year, the band released its first album, also called Vixen, which reached No. 41 on the Billboard 200. The group's best-known song was Edge of a Broken Heart, the kind of song "you go to concerts to hear," she explained. Soft rock singer-songwriter Richard Marx, who had a string of his own hits at the time, co-wrote the track.
Vixen made money but didn't sock it away as the band should have, Ross recalled.
"We spent it promoting the band and record sales, instead of buying a house, which would have been nice," she said. "I can't blame somebody else. I can't point fingers. It was us. Gene Simmons from Kiss and Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick both told me the same thing: 'The only money you can count on in rock and roll is the money you get up front.' They were right."
Vixen broke up in 1992, and Ross went on to become a lead singer and guitarist for her own band. In 1996, she married Bam, a drummer for an English band, and they formed a group, recording songs that appear in movies, including the Netflix hit "Double Threat."
"A drummer and a bass player. It's so classic, it's hilarious," said Ross, a stepmother to Bam's three grown children and a stepgrandmother of 12.
In the late 1990s, Ross won Best Female Guitarist in Los Angeles two years in a row from the LA Music Awards. She also took on odd jobs. House painter. Travel agent. Video editor. Author of a knitting book ("Punk Knits").
Organized Vixen reunion
She and Bam moved from Los Angeles to Boynton Beach in 2009. Ross kept performing and working, pivoting to a life coach and a video coach for female entrepreneurs.
Vixen members reunited several times through the years, but Ross was content with her own work. Finally, she organized a reunion in 2012.
A rocker pal, Avery Carl, who runs a real estate firm focusing on short-term rentals, eventually suggested real estate to Ross. She previously had considered it, but she said her negative experiences with other real estate agents always made her think her personality wouldn't translate well to the more conservative world of property sales.
"I couldn't deal with the old-fashioned Realtor," she said. "They looked at my tattoos like I was from Mars."
But Carl convinced her that she could make it work and not have to change for anyone. Ross gave it a try and found she fit in better than she thought she would.
She said her real estate clients never knew she was still active in music because, by this point, Vixen wasn't on tour, but rather performing occasional weekend shows, or "fly dates," as they're called.
Patience pays off
Investor Casey McCanles started working with Ross shortly after she had earned a real estate license. McCanles described herself as a real estate novice, recalling a time when she asked a series of annoying questions of Ross in a 20-minute phone call. She was impressed with how patient Ross was.
McCanles, head of human resources for a private equity firm, eventually started networking and landed $1.5 million in financing to buy and flip houses. She knew exactly who she wanted representing her in those deals.
"That one conversation stuck with me, so after I got my financing lined up, I reached back out," McCanles said. "She's always one step ahead of what I need to know."
In 2022, wanting a less itinerant lifestyle and more reliable income, Ross took a hiatus from Vixen and launched the full-time real estate gig. She has no immediate plans to return to Vixen, but she isn't ruling it out, either.
As a musician, Ross slept on couches, worked odd hours, traveled abroad and met interesting characters. It turns out, all of that set her up for success in real estate, she said.
"Nothing surprises me," Ross said. "I have the ability to read a room and get a vibe on people."
All the while remaining true to herself.
"I ain't your grandma's Realtor," she said, laughing.