"That's a great coup for us", company principle Lance Carlyle says of the $4.5 million deal, in which Brooke Gordon bought the 10,000-square-foot-house and two adjoining lots.

It's the highest-profile deal Carlyle Properties has brokered to data in quickly building its reputation for fast, high-dollar sales.

That's just the start, says Lance, who founded Carlyle Properties with his parents, Jim and Marci Carlyle.

The venture follows Jim and Marci's success at Lake Realty. Their 2002 sales with that firm combined with deals brokered thus far with Carlyle Properties, and valued at more that $30 million, with the bulk of those deals--totaling about $21 million--occurring at The Peninsula.

"This year, we are on target to double what we did last year," Lance says. "We are really trying to make our presence known in the lake market."

One key to the company's quick success has been it's around-the-clock availability.

"Our biggest clients call us on average between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., and we have gotten calls at 2 a.m. before," Lance says. "It sounds so simple, but if you call us we're going to answer."

The firm's agents have been known to show property at midnight. On other occasions, prospective buyers have been taken to lakefront sites by boat.

And customers always get the star treatment. They can include gifts such as a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne.

"We don't want to work with people just once--we want to always be their real estate brokers," Lance says. "Its all about relationships."

Things started taking off for the Carlyles in 2002, Jim was involved in 15 transactions in The Peninsula ranging in price from $428,000 to $3.1 million. He sold one house on Harbor Light Boulevard for $1.6 million in just two days and a $2.75 million home on the same street in 21 days.

That success helped prompt the family to go out on its own with Carlyle Properties.

Bill Markham, owner of Concord-based Markham and Co., an accounting and systems consulting business, has completed more than $7 million in real estate transactions with him.

"When Jim sold my first home in Davidson at River Run in 60 days, he was instantly my hero because I had had it on the market for two years."

Persistence is crucial to such deals. Lance recalls riding with Jim and a client who was interested in a house that wasn't for sale. "We knocked on the door, and the owner said to go away," he says. "Two weeks later, we made the deal work for $2 million."