John Landry

Many a Santa Fe real estate agent likes to lead with a head shot, a full-page ad, or a business card. John Landry relies instead on his southern charm, his bayou accent, his distinctive colorful outfits, his curiosity about others, and his previous careers as a corporate aviation pilot, a marketing director, and an entrepreneur. The southern Louisiana native took his first solo flight at age 16. He aspired to become a “jet jockey” and earned degrees in both aeronautical science and business administration. He worked as a corporate pilot until after the Vietnam War when more job competition among pilots led him into a new field.

He became marketing director of an oil company. “I was building the footprints for gas stations from Pennsylvania to Dallas,” recalls Landry. This work, which involved researching properties and land administration, evolved into LandFacts, the energy exploration company he founded in 1980 and still owns.

But flying was still in his blood. And that passion eventually brought him to Santa Fe as a pilot for a private corporate jet company.

“I’d fly people who were coming here to do business with the state, with the BLM [Bureau of Land Management], with the Los Alamos National Labs,” says Landry over a bowl of breakfast granola at the Plaza Café Downtown, whose owner greets him by his first name. “They were well-heeled businesspeople coming here to do business. Then [COVID-19] stopped a lot of that.”

No matter. Landry simply took off his pilot’s cap and put on his real estate agent’s hat. He became a member of the Keller Williams team — at 64 — and transferred all his real estate knowledge to Santa Fe.

“I basically never thought of it as a career or a pivot. My age was never a factor. I thought, ‘Here’s a great opportunity,’” he says.

He immersed himself in the state’s people and culture, mostly through volunteering — for museums, at Traditional Spanish Market, at International Folk Art Market, at his church. “I met artists and museum curators. It’s all part of getting involved. Finding out how things work here. And people are very kind about it. They share. It’s a fluid place.”

He’s a social animal — personable, outgoing, easygoing. But with a purpose: to sell. But not hard. Easy. “I bring joie de vivre,” says Landry. “And my clients, who tend to be in science and engineering, are people who’ve been coming here all their lives who want to own a piece of Santa Fe. People who just really want to be in Santa Fe. People like me.”