On an August afternoon in Lake Tahoe, Shari Chase drove a white Porsche down a steep drive into a private community on the East Shore, where luxury homes overlook a golden meadow and hug a quiet, peaceful bay. This is Glenbrook, a historic community founded in 1860 that today is a lakeside retreat for the wealthy, coveted for its treasured location and privacy, long sandy beach, and golf club amenities. Its ZIP code is often ranked as one of the most expensive in the nation; in July, the median listing price for a home was $6.1 million. Two years ago, President Joe Biden vacationed here. It’s also hidden. Drivers on Highway 50 speed past the discrete pullout that leads into Glenbrook, completely unaware of what lies below the bend. I almost missed the turn myself.

I met Chase at the front gate to Glenbrook, where a security guard waved both of our cars through, and I followed her down the road. Then, Chase drove through a second gate, entering an even more exclusive place. Shakespeare Ranch Properties is a 130-acre enclave within an enclave, with more than 400 feet of shoreline, a 465-foot-long private pier, and 17 residences and dwellings. Horses grazed in the rodeo grounds behind a historic barn that was built in 1873. Multiple parcels at Shakespeare Ranch Properties are currently listed for sale, starting at $9,950,000. Or, one could purchase the entire ranch for $188 million.

As the founder and CEO of Chase International Real Estate, a firm that dominates the luxury real estate market in Lake Tahoe, Shari Chase is tasked with selling Tahoe’s most expensive property. She formed a team that she calls “highly talented” for the job. It’s a herculean assignment, but if anyone can sell Shakespeare Ranch Properties, it’s Chase.

Advertisement

Article continues below this ad

The Glenbrook office for Chase International Real Estate.

Chase landed in Lake Tahoe in 1984 as a young woman from Canada. She’d visited before on a family vacation when she was 16. She didn’t know many people, but she wanted to live beyond the confines of her hometown and travel the world. She had a singular vision to represent five of the wealthiest people in the world and manage all of their real estate transactions. In 1986, she started Chase International.

The private pier at Shakespeare Ranch Properties in Lake Tahoe.

Her vision didn’t materialize exactly the way she’d intended. Instead of five clients, she built a large, successful real estate company that would transform Lake Tahoe and the way people experience the region. This isn’t hyperbole: In 1998, Chase orchestrated a record-breaking deal when she sold the historic Thunderbird Lodge on Tahoe’s East Shore for $50 million, the highest price ever paid for a residence in the United States at that time. The sale was key to a complicated land transfer agreement that conserved the iconic, historic East Shore property. Today, Chase International has sold more homes priced over $20 million than any other firm in the region. The company also dominates sales in other categories for homes priced above $10 million and above $5 million. In 2024, Chase International recorded three of the four highest sales in Lake Tahoe, Reno and the Carson Valley.

Advertisement

Article continues below this ad

From the start, Chase operated differently than her peers, approaching the then male-dominated real estate business not just by the numbers but with an eye for marketing and a passion for spirituality — what Chase calls a “heart-centered philosophy.” When the housing market crashed during the 2008 recession, she brought in a spiritual leader with a background in alchemy to speak with her agents and help the company reset the way it does business.

It worked. Over the past four decades, Chase and her company have represented both buyers and sellers in unprecedented, mind-boggling real estate sales. Today, Chase International (which has no affiliation with Chase Bank) consists of more than 360 people and, in the past five years alone, has sold more than $10 billion worth of real estate.

The view from the rooftop deck of a newly built cabana at Shakespeare Ranch Properties in Lake Tahoe.

Two weeks earlier, I met Chase for the first time at another gated community called Clear Creek Tahoe, which is perched on a mountainside overlooking the Carson Valley, just outside the Tahoe Basin. It’s a peaceful place with expansive views, surrounded by open land, and it’s taking off. “It’s the newest, most exciting development in the whole region,” Chase said. A $12.5 million home had recently sold in Clear Creek Tahoe, setting a new sales record for the private community.

Advertisement

Article continues below this ad

At Clear Creek Tahoe, Chase greeted me warmly, wearing a linen shawl with an iconic bob I recognize from the black-and-white portraits featured in real estate advertisements. Reading glasses on top of her head held wisps of hair out of her eyes, which are blue and unblinking, friendly and disarming.

I arrived thinking we’d talk about the brick and mortar of Tahoe’s luxury real estate — the bedrooms and bathrooms, the dream kitchens, the landscaped grounds. Instead, our conversation entered a wholly other dimension as Chase began to talk about integrity and the set of values that guides her work, the power of positive thinking, one’s spiritual energy. Chase seems to hold both the uncanny ability to see the future and also will it into existence. She possesses remarkable self-assurance and confidence, but it’s not arrogance. It’s conviction, built from decades of experience, working closely with people to help them manifest their dreams.

“That’s the one thing in life that I am: determined,” Chase said.

From the start, Chase intuited that selling homes in a place like Tahoe was less about the number of bedrooms and square footage and more about lifestyle. So that’s what she focused on selling. She leaned into lifestyle when most real estate agents in the 1980s approached sales from a purely transactional standpoint. A family member owned a condominium development, and to help sell the condos, Chase played the role of the host, serving potential buyers lunch, pouring glasses of wine and taking them down to the beach. At the condo development, Chase said she met people from all over California, some of them from big farming families in the Central Valley. That summer, she was instrumental in 13 sales.

Advertisement

Article continues below this ad

Shari Chase, founder and CEO of Chase International Real Estate, studies landscaping designs for Shakespeare Ranch Properties in Lake Tahoe.

Chase didn’t have instant connections to a........

© SFGate