Elliman’s Roy Fenn Is Rancho Mission Viejo’s Community Emcee
by David Hay
May 2026
“I’m crazy busy,” Roy Fenn tells me.
As I’m catching him just before the December holidays, I assume the Laguna Niguel, Calif.-based agent for Douglas Elliman is dealing with an end-of-year rush of closings in the Orange County community of Rancho Mission Viejo (RMV). But I soon learn that “crazy busy” isn’t a seasonal phenomenon for Fenn—it’s his default setting.
More than merely a real estate agent, Fenn is a consummate community booster. A resident of RMV, where he has lived with his family since 2017, he has established himself as the unofficial Minister of Fun by organizing numerous celebrations for the three villages that make up this planned community, which will eventually have 14,000 residents, just north of San Diego. Last December marked the ninth annual run of his magnum opus, the RMV Holiday Crawl, featuring convoys of elaborately decorated golf carts and other residential EVs that wend their way through the streets on the nights leading up to Christmas, blasting music and much good cheer.
“I’ve been doing these parties on wheels since before I became a realtor, but, boy, have they grown in popularity!” says Fenn, whose first efforts drew some 20 carts before ballooning to more than 200 in recent years.
Apart from being a genuine passion project for the agent, the celebrations have made him a true pillar of this exclusive community of low-density, often-gated neighborhoods that have been planned and erected over the last thirty years. With such names as The Covenant, Fairbanks Ranch, The Bridges, The Crosby, and Rancho Valencia, each offers luxury housing along with private recreation facilities close by. Their overriding style is California Mediterranean, and there are numerous golf clubs and hiking trails. The Crosby, an homage to the legendary crooner, is centered around an 18-hole championship golf course.
As idyllic as this sounds, it’s not easy turf for brokers, given that many of the new developments in the area offer direct-to-customer listings online, with options to customize. It’s all very frictionless for consumers, but where, I asked Fenn, does a broker fit into this process?
“I am a client’s eyes and ears on the ground,” he tells me, adding that he also works to help them get a more attractive interest rate. “If they don’t want to loop me in, that’s okay. But if they do want a real estate professional, it’s my job to be the best one there is here.”
Fenn worked for retail giant Macy’s before pivoting to real estate in 2019. The following year, when pandemic lockdowns led to a boom in migrations, he managed to list 26 houses. “It was on-the-job training of the most intense kind,” he recalls.
It also inspired the Roy Fenn philosophy, which he summed up in an Instagram Reel after a long day. “You hire me to sell your home, but you don’t realize how far I’ll go to get the job done,” he wrote. “My kids were at karate, and we had tickets to the Ducks, but I didn’t hesitate for one second to extend my showing to ensure that these buyers would walk away wanting to put in an offer. And it worked. We have an offer in hand, and my sellers are very happy!”
Many of his clients already live in one of the communities but now want to move up to one with bigger, more luxurious homes and better amenities. And they already know the lengths he’ll go to for the community.
“The vast majority of these buyers have seen me in action,” Fenn says. “I don’t do it for business reasons, but in this market, it’s made a huge difference.”
David Hay is a well-known architectural writer and playwright. His stories have been featured in The New York Times, Dwell and New York.
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