Clay Fouts, founder and owner of West USA Realty originated its first office in Phoenix, Arizona in 1986. West USA Realty became one of the largest real estate firms in the State of Arizona and in the nation. We didn’t invent the 100% plan, we just perfected it. West USA Realty offers a competitive fee structure for the 100% agent or an accommodating split program for its agents.
Founded in 1986, West USA Realty grew from 1 agent to over 2000 in a very short time. One office grew into “6“ large offices in the Valley of the Sun. West USA Realty has experienced a 49% growth in revenue and an 86.5% growth in agent count. The company is currently expanding and looking for high-production real estate agents and teams. In the 1980’s the real estate market was quite different. Technology-driven, West USA Realty has been a leader in the industry. West USA Realty’s in-house computer software developed specifically by our computer division, helped West USA become who we are today. Excellent support staff, Broker support, and its agents have been a key tool for our success. West USA Realty was one of the first real estate companies with a website. West USA Realty incorporated a centralized data entry division for processing and a centralized call center at its corporate office to handle incoming phone calls seven days a week.
In 2016, West USA Realty, Inc. celebrates its 30th year providing real estate services to the State of Arizona, having represented over 250,000 clients since the company was founded.
About Carl Chapman, REALTOR – Assoicate Broker
Childhood and Education
Carl Chapman was born in 1959 at San Antonio’s Christus Health Children’s Hospital. The hospital has a long and storied history in the San Antonio area. The Sisters of Charity of the Word Incarnate opened it in 1869 as an infirmary. It began caring for pediatric patients in 1874 and opened its first pediatric unit in the 1880s.
For the first year of his life, Chapman continued to live in San Antonio. San Antonio is the country’s seventh largest city with a population of over 1.5 million people. It is a financial and cultural hub in the state and hosts numerous museums, galleries, restaurants and other tourist hot spots. It welcomes millions of visitors to the area each year.
In 1960, Chapman and his family relocated to Mariposa, California. Mariposa, founded in 1849, garnered much of its fame as one of the state’s gold rush towns. Today, it is a thriving and modern community. However, it pays homage to its Wild West roots and proudly welcomes tourists to its courthouse, which itself dates back to 1854.
Mariposa is also home to an excellent school system of which Chapman was part during his early childhood there. He attended Mariposa Elementary School’s kindergarten class. The school has a long history of promoting students’ academic, emotional, social and physical excellence. It also offers a myriad of extracurricular activities for students including Girl Scouts and Project Smile.
After kindergarten, Chapman continued his education by attending Rainbow Elementary School in Rainbow, California. The school, now called Vallecitos Elementary School, prioritizes creating productive and intelligent young citizens. It accomplishes this in part by incorporating the role of students’ parents in the educational process and also having high standards for all of its staff members.
The town of Rainbow itself is relatively small and only has a population of around 1800 people. It serves as a gateway to the larger city of Temecula and shares its location in the northern area of San Diego County. It is home to dozens of palm tree farms and named after the Rainbow family who purchased the first homestead in the area when this part of California came open for settling.
In 1967, Chapman’s family moved to Wawona, California, which is about 18 miles east of Mariposa. There, he attended Yosemite Wawona Charter Elementary School. This school prides itself on its project-based curriculum that is designed to foster curiosity and lifelong learning in all of the students who attend there.
When he came of age, Chapman spent much of his summers working at the Pioneer Yosemite History Center, which is located in the Yosemite National Park. Some of the exhibits and sites that he helped take care of and show off to tourists to the area include the park’s covered bridge, which was built in 1857. Other sites in the park include the cavalry office, Degnan’s bakery, the homestead cabin that dates back to the late 1880s, and the blacksmith shop, which served pioneers traveling through the area by shoeing their horses.
When he was not in school or working at the history center, Chapman indulged in spending time in the scenic outdoors of Southern California. In fact, he learned to ski Badger Pass, which is located within the Yosemite National Park. Its highest peaks reach more than 8000 feet above sea level. Even the restaurant and service buildings in the ski area are at elevations of 7200 feet.
The ski area offers ski areas for all proficiency levels. It is ideal for beginners with its training areas and bunny slopes. It also offers areas for snow tubing and snowboarding.
When he was not out on the slopes, Chapman spent time hanging out at the national park’s Ansel Adams Gallery. This gallery serves as a gallery for the famous photographer’s works. It also regularly showcases photographs and artwork by other area artists and photographers. The staff at the gallery is comprised of people who harbor a great affinity for the Yosemite National Park.
With family roots that run deep in Wawona, it is little wonder that Chapman spent much of his childhood hiking and exploring the Mariposa Grove. This grove, of course, is home to more than 500 mature giant sequoias. It became part of the national park in 1864 when Abraham Lincoln designated it as an area for public use, resort and recreation.
In 1974, Chapman began high school in Parker, Arizona. As home of the blue and gold Bronc’s, Parker High School offers tuition tax credits to parents and guardians of its students. It also hosts numerous extracurricular activities like skate nights for students and staff members.
When he was just 14 years old, Chapman took his first class in broadcasting at Arizona Western College. He tested for and received his commercial radio operator license from the Federal Communications Commissions or FCC. As a young teenager, this feat was in and of itself impressive given the amount of documentation and testing that is required for it.
With his new license to his credit, he soon took a job as a videographer at a local television station, which was noted in the area publication the Yuma Daily Sun. Before he graduated high school, he also accepted a position as an engineering assistant at KDMX, which is famous for being the first Native-owned radio station in the U.S.
In 1978, Chapman graduated from high school and moved to Yosemite Valley. He briefly took a job with Yosemite Park and Curry Company, which was founded in 1925 and serves to contain the business records of Yosemite National Park’s largest and longest operating concessioners.
He then moved to Flagstaff in 1979 where he began pursuing a degree in broadcasting at Northern Arizona University. Part of his undergraduate studies afforded him the opportunity to create and critique short stories made with moving imagery and audio.
He became an active member of the university’s student government, which oversees many academic and service associations on campus. He graduated with a broadcasting degree with an emphasis in creative media and film. After graduation, he took a job as a videographer at KNAZ, which is an NBC-affiliate that serves the Flagstaff area in Arizona.
Early Career
By 1982, Chapman’s career had taken him to Chandler, Arizona. Chandler is a suburb of Phoenix and home to more than 257,000 residents. Much of its economy has long centered around technology and retail. In fact, dozens of national and global companies make their home in Chandler. Among them are InfusionSoft, Microchip, Rogers and Bashas.
However, Chapman did not take a job in either of these industries. Instead, in 1982 he accepted a position as an operations manager for Service Corporation of America or SCA Incorporated.
At the time, SCA was a Boston-based waste management and environmental services corporation. When it was founded, it was intended to function within the industries of building maintenance, vending, food, travel and waste disposal services.
However, when the company’s stock began being publicly traded in the middle 1970s, the company’s leaders decided to focus solely on waste disposal. At its height, the company boasted sales totaling more than $660 million. It also had 39 landfills in the U.S, 100 municipal contracts, 110,000 commercial contracts, and more than 100,000 dumpsters.
Chapman’s next relocation took him to Tempe, a city of 192,000 residents that is located in the East Valley area of the Phoenix metropolis. Tempe gains its fame as the site of the main campus of Arizona State University.
However, it is also home to dozens of national businesses including Cold Stone Creamery, Lifelock, Insight Enterprises, First Solar and Limelight Networks. It also once served as the location for several national collegiate football bowl games like the Fiesta Bowl and the Insight Bowl.
By 1983, Chapman had accepted a job as an instructional technologist for the Washington Elementary School District in Phoenix. The district is made up of 18 kindergarten through sixth-grade schools, two K-5 schools, seven K-8 schools, and five middle or junior high schools. One of the highlights of his career with the school district involved installing more than 1000 Acorn computers.
Acorn was one of the most popular models of computers in use at the time. In fact, the computer sold so well in the early 1980s that U.K.-based company profits rose significantly, making it worth millions of dollars by 1985. One of the most commonly used models of Acorn computers was the Atom, which were manufactured from 1980 to 1982. This model of computer was replaced by the BBC Micro.
In 1985, Chapman accepted a position as the Director of Telecommunications for Mohave Community College in Kingman. Mohave Community College was founded in 1970 and serves around 1700 full-time students. Offering both day and night courses, students can pursue degrees in fields like nursing, education, engineering, industrial technology and public safety. The school also offers online courses to students.
Kingman serves as the seat of Mohave County. It has a population of 45,000 people and is only about 100 miles to the southeast of Las Vegas. Its economy centers heavily around education and retail. Some of the city’s biggest employers are the local public school district, K-Mart, Walmart, True Value and Petro Stopping Centers.
While serving as the school’s director of telecommunications, Chapman served on the Arizona Articulation Task Force. This task force served a critical role in the state’s academia community.
Specifically, it facilitated the transfer of credits for students among the state’s public universities. It allowed educators at the schools to voice opinions about what credits should partially or completely transfer and also permitted task force members to be a deciding voice in whether or not student credits could be accepted by one public university from another.
In 1991, Chapman took a position as the manager of media services for Arizona State University. ASU is one of the largest universities in the state and serves as a research facility for many of the school’s colleges. It has five campus throughout Phoenix and four smaller regional learning centers throughout Arizona.
Its student body is over 90,000-strong, making it one of the biggest public universities in the U.S. Students can choose from any of the 350 undergraduate programs and 400 graduate and post-graduate programs.
In 1994, Chapman went back to school to pursue a graduate degree. He earned a masters of education degree from Northern Arizona University. This degree prepares students to shape organizations like school communities and non-profit charities. It also teaches students to assume leadership positions, teach or work in international schools, and pursue advanced degrees in learning and teaching.
In 1995, he accepted the position of Director of Instructional Technology for Thunderbird Graduate School of International Business. The school is located on the downtown Phoenix campus of Arizona State University. The undergraduate programs for the school are offered on ASU’s West campus.
By 1998, Chapman had taken a position as director for American Interconnection University. This university offers dozens of on-campus and online degree programs and makes obtaining an undergraduate or graduate degree easy for students who work full-time, have family commitments or need flexibility in learning. The school is accredited and partners each student with his or her own graduation team.
By 2000, Chapman’s career expanded into film and television. He welcomed the opportunity to become a writer, producer and executive producer for a number of programs created for Vivendi, the French mass media conglomerate. Some of the projects in which he had a hand included Curriculum Advantage, which aims to teach educators how to master online classrooms.
He also worked on Class Works, which specializes in closing educational gaps among students and facilitating better and faster educational growth. Finally, he played a role in the creation of Hyperstudio, an online program geared toward making movies, videos and other multimedia projects. Some of the features of Hyperstudio include a family tree maker, a print shop, a 3D weather globe, clue finders and other programs designed to make completing virtual projects more fun and easier.
Post-2000 Career
The new millennium got off to an exciting start for Chapman. In 2003, he became an associate broker for West USA Realty. West USA Realty specializes in selling residential and commercial properties. It also sells land and business opportunities and also handles rentals, property management, relocation services and the sale and purchase of luxury homes.
West USA also raises money for and joins forces with non-profit charities in the area to serve the underprivileged and at-risk. It partners with organizations like the Salvation Army and Habitat Humanity to fund numerous charity efforts in the community each year. Office ambassadors from each West USA Realty office serve on the West USA Realty Cares board of directors.
Chapman then went on to obtain his board membership and real estate broker license from the Phoenix Association of Realtors. These credentials allowed him to call himself as a full-fledged Realtor.
In 2009, Chapman accepted a position as Director of Digital Marketing for Wiley Efficient Learning. Efficient Learning offers clients the best CPA review course. It matches its materials to the latest CPA exam blueprints and prides itself on offering the best CPA exam preparation.
It also offers clients unlimited access to the online course until they pass. It boasts a 90 percent success rate for clients who go on to pass the CPA exam.
By 2011, his career had taken him to Sedona, Arizona, a town that sits on the Coconino and Yavapai county lines. As a small town of just 10,000 residents, Sedona is most famous for its red sandstone formations.
It welcomes scores of tourists each year who come to the city for hiking, mountain biking and spiritual retreats. Other major draws to the area are the numerous film festivals that are held every year as well as outdoor music concerts held several times each year.
However, Chapman’s time in Sedona was focused mainly on venturing into the search engine optimization or SEO industry. He had a hand in the use of SEO for companies like Petsmart. Petsmart is one of the country’s largest pet retailers and offers everything from toys, food, and apparel as well as grooming services for pets of all kinds.
He also worked in Phoenix, the fifth largest city in the U.S. and home to around 1.7 million residents. Phoenix is home to scores of museums, art galleries, restaurants and other tourist hot spots. It also has its own has its own professional sports teams like the Suns and Diamondbacks.
Chapman also created SEO for organizations like Channel Intelligence. In 2013, Google acquired Channel Intelligence as part of its efforts to enhance its e-commerce efforts with consumers as well as to boost online product referrals. The price tag for the acquisition totaled $125 million.
By 2013, Chapman’s career expanded into Scottsdale, a city of 255,000 and a part of the Greater Phoenix area. His time there was focused on the search engine optimization for an entity called iCrossing.
iCrossing focuses primarily on digital marketing for a variety of organizations and businesses. Some of the clients that use the digital marketing services of iCrossing include AAA, Petsmart, DirecTV, and Toyota.
Finally, he created SEO strategies for a company called Thomson Reuters. This business prides itself on being one of the most trusted providers of answers in the world. It paves the way for business leaders to run better companies.
It also works with clients in a wide array of industries ranging from law and government to tax compliance and media. It is headquartered in Eagan, Minnesota but has a wide reach with its clients online.
Aside from creating SEO strategies for a variety of businesses, Chapman also functions as a writer and web publisher for numerous websites. Among them is MyAlaskan.com, a website devoted to all things Alaska. It provides an insight into what it is like to live in or visit Alaska. It also gives a rundown of the most welcoming of Alaskan towns and what kinds of activities and sites that tourists can encounter if they make a trip to this state.
Another website for which he writes and publishes is Arizonan.com. This is the website for West USA Realty and devotes itself to listing all sorts of properties for sale. Buyers and sellers both can utilize the services on this website to list or buy real estate in Arizona.
Yet another website that he writes for is DUIWise.com. DUIWise serves to inform drivers in all states about the most recent DUI and DWI laws. It alerts them to details like allowable blood alcohol content levels, DUI penalties and available DUI lawyers in their areas.
Other legal websites to his credit include Divorceknowledgebase.com, Findlaw.com, Superlawyers.com, Abogado.com and Lawinfo.com. These websites provide information on how to access legal services in every state as well as what to expect when pursuing cases like divorce or child support or custody issues in court. Abogado.com provides this information in Spanish.
In addition to his professional endeavors, Chapman also devotes a considerable amount of time to volunteering in the community. He is a founding member of Katmai Conservancy, an organization that devotes itself to caring for and preserving wildlife in the Katmai National Park in Alaska. It actively raises funds that are spent protecting the national park as well as all of the wildlife within it.
Chapman is also a board member of The Reel Project. This organization creates films to highlight dire humanitarian needs throughout the world particularly in Africa. The films made by The Reel Project aim to inspire people to donate money to at-risk populations.
Finally, he handles SEO for an organization called Ohio Legal Help, which provides legal resources at no cost to people. It assists people in tackling a wide array of legal challenges like housing dilemmas, family crises like child support issues or divorce, accessing health and public benefits and resolving money and debt problems. It also provides resources for senior citizens, veterans and military members, as well as people facing going to court or involved in criminal cases.