Meet Tom
His Early Years
Tom was born in Fort Worth and is proud to call himself a native Texan. He grew up in Richardson and graduated from Richardson High School in 1972. He attended the University of Arkansas on a tennis scholarship playing in the #2 position in both singles and doubles during his senior year in 1976, Arkansas' first year in the Southwest Conference for tennis.
Tom graduated from the U of A with a degree in education and immediately began coaching tennis at Texas High School in Texarkana. He returned to Dallas a year and a half later to enroll in graduate school at the University of North Texas in Denton. While earning his Master of Education degree, he also served as the assistant tennis coach. He thought coaching would be his career, but he realized that being passionate about something and making a living are two different things.
Before Real Estate
Tom's entry into the business world was training as a service supervisor in Oklahoma and Mississippi, learning hydraulic well fracturing at the Western Company of North America. Unfortunately, two years after he joined Western, the bottom fell out of the oil market, so he decided to return to Dallas without a clue what he was going to do with his life. As fate would have it, he found an ad in the newspaper for a commercial real estate agent and followed up on it.
That proved to be a smart move, and Tom did well as an office, office/showroom, and industrial building specialist in far west Dallas. He sold some very large buildings for insurance companies and negotiated several major leases for Fortune 500 firms, but something was missing from his life. He wasn't happy working in a world of concrete, steel, glass, and traffic. He wanted to get out of the rat race and away from the grind, so to the total amazement of all of his peers, he told his clients he was leaving commercial real estate and simply walked away "cold turkey" one day. After many months of searching, he found a wonderful home in Lucas on a beautiful 5-acre tract of land with a big, hundred-year-old barn, two spring-fed ponds, and a 19-mile equestrian trail outside the gate.
Tom and Rhonda shared a peaceful life in Lucas with horses, dogs, pot bellied pigs, feral cats, a 100 year old barn, everything the country has to offer. That's where he and Rhonda raised Jason, their only child and gave him a wonderful country upbringing. There was just one problem, Rhonda had left her job to stay home with Jason, and Tom had no source of income. He took a year off trying to decide what he was going to do, and finally settled on residential real estate. He started his own company working out of their house without a clue how difficult residential would be.
His Residential Career
Tom started residential real estate under his own name (Tom Grisak Estate Homes, Realtors) because he was too stubborn to join a company. Tom had already earned his Texas Real Estate Broker's License so he was able to start his own company. He made the decision to become an expert in the area he lived but didn't know a soul.
Knowing absolutely nothing about residential real estate, he had to learn the business from the ground up with no-one to ask questions of. He didn't know how to find the MLS, get the contracts, market a home, find prospective buyers or sellers, nothing. The only thing that saved him was his realization he had a family to feed, a new home to pay for, and if he was going to be successful, he had to do it himself. Somehow, he survived those early years and built his business doing a great job for both buyers and sellers, one transaction at a time.
Tom is now celebrating his 25th consecutive year as the #1 agent in Fairview, Lucas, and Parker, Texas. In 2025, Tom was ranked #2 in the number of sales of million dollar plus homes in all of Collin County. He's also the #1 agent in sales volume with the Keller Williams Allen Office, the #1 real estate office in Collin County. His team, The Grisak Group, is the #1 group in the very busy office as well.
Tom's Other Interests
Besides spending family time with Rhonda, our three rescue dogs, and two stray cats, Tom is a certified FAA Drone Pilot, a PPR Certified Pickleball instructor, an Allen, Tx pickleball ambassador, and enjoys playing chess in the evenings.
