New Course and Designation Creates Opportunity for Real Estate Professionals
Equestrians belong to a unique club. We have more in common with one another than not. Our shared love of the horse and our passion for riding, training, and competing brings us together and bonds us. Horse people know what’s needed to take proper care of our beloved charges, and we don’t suffer fools well—especially where our horses are concerned. We have extensive knowledge about the value of well-made fences, indoor arenas with excellent footing, safe, solid stalls, and healthy pastures growing in good soil. When horse people want to purchase or sell an equestrian property, we want a real estate agent who can speak “horse” and who understands the work and expense involved in creating top-rate amenities.
Unfortunately, there aren’t enough real estate agents with experience and horse “sense” who grasp what’s important to equestrians. Sellers and buyers of equestrian properties can become frustrated and disappointed, and real estate professionals are losing out on the opportunity that representing these properties, many of them luxury estates, could bring their business.
Enter EquiAgent
EquiAgent and the Equestrian Real Estate Academy are a new educational course and designation designed to help real estate agents both learn about equestrian sales and then achieve an equestrian property specialist designation after they’ve completed the training. This is a U.S. national designation, covering all 50 states.
Founded by two passionate, experienced, and talented equestrians who are also accomplished real estate agents, Allison Trimble and Blake Westhoff have spent years developing and perfecting the course to meet the needs of agents who want to expand their knowledge and achieve the designation.
Business partners, Allison and Blake own AB Real Estate in Ferndale, WA. They’ve grown their successful equestrian property sales business—with $300 million+ in sales—by becoming well-known among horse people as knowledgeable, hardworking representatives in the field. Allison and Blake have put their many years of experience in the horse business to good use helping equestrians sell and buy properties.
The pair have both trained horses professionally and continue to be heavily involved in the business, breeding and raising top Quarter horses as well as competing. They understand what a good horse property encompasses and have experienced the pitfalls that come with mistakes made. With hard-won experience, they’ve seen many of the things that can go wrong with horse properties and hobby farms when they’re not managed by someone with expertise in equine.
The course they’ve developed takes agents through all the intricacies of knowledge needed to represent equestrian properties and sets agents up for success.
Step One: Learn
The Equestrian Real Estate Academy Course is fully online, step-by-step, easily digestible, and contains 8 modules. Student/agents can work through the course at their own speed (the full course takes about 4 hours). The course has been carefully designed and will equip agents with the expertise needed to excel in the equestrian property market.
Step Two: Achieve the Equestrian Property Specialist Designation
Completing the course is the first step to earning the Equestrian Property Specialist Designation. Agents can continue after to earn the designation and be invited to join the premium community where they can apply for the EquiAgent Designation upon reaching a certain volume of property sales.
Step 3: Get Connected with and EquiAgent
If you are an equestrian property buyer or seller, visit the website to fill out a request to be matched with a qualified EquiAgent in your local area. There are EquiAgents in all 50 states!
“The Equestrian Real Estate Academy and the EquiAgent designation were created to ‘tip our hats’ to the equestrian property agents who came before us; now it’s our opportunity to give a leg up to the agents who dream of becoming one,” says Allison.
Please visit www.equiagent.com for more information.
See this article in the May 2025 Online Digital Edition:
May 2025
Kim Roe grew up riding on the family ranch and competed in Western rail classes, trail horse, reining, working cow, and hunter/jumper. She trained her first horse for money at 12 years old, starting a pony for a neighbor.
Kim has been a professional dressage instructor in Washington state for over 30 years, training hundreds of horses and students through the levels. In recent years Kim has become involved in Working Equitation and is a small ‘r’ Working Equitation judge with WE United.
Kim is the editor of the Northwest Horse Source Magazine, and also a writer, photographer, and poet. She owns and manages Blue Gate Farm in Deming, Washington where she continues to be passionate about helping horses and riders in many disciplines.
