Before Trixie Mattel opened the Trixie Motel, there was already a drag queen dominating the real estate scene. Austin’s own Ruby Dickulous has juggled comedy and her Drag Realty business for 14 years, helping Austinites find their dream homes. This June, she fulfilled a personal dream with an appearance on HGTV’s iconic show House Hunters.
“Trixie can’t be the only person building stuff,” Ruby reasons. “I was doing this before she even got on Drag Race.”
Real estate has been in Ruby’s life from a young age, as she recalls her mother being “a realtor, but not a good one” who often handled her family’s frequent relocations. “My dad is a lot like a gay man,” Ruby remarks. “He’s an alcoholic that moves to a new city every three years. So my mom was just like the realtor for us, and I always loved it.” Since securing her own real estate licence in 2011, she’s sold in the suburbs, Downtown, and even outside Austin in Leander and Round Rock. She acknowledges that the city has been fairly cost preventative as of late and not everyone can afford to buy. However, “the biggest problem is people that bought at the top of the market are kind of stuck upside down in their homes,” Ruby says. But the upside of other people’s misfortune – i.e. folks who’re selling because they’ve been laid off or can’t otherwise afford their mortgage – is that, in Ruby’s view, “it does open the door for buyers that have been saving their money for this moment … if you’ve been planning, now is a great time.”…