Nice to meet you!

Hi, I’m Shayla (Shay) Sellars. I’m the Founder and Managing Director of The Emerge Group, a real estate practice working across acquisition, planning, development, and land stewardship.

For more than 17 years, I’ve worked across commercial real estate acquisition, underwriting, development, project management, asset management, and investment. I founded SASRE Properties in 2013 and later 21 South Capital. Those experiences ultimately shaped the work I lead today through The Emerge Group.

Through The Emerge Group, I work at the intersection of real estate, land, capital, and community—helping organizations, entrepreneurs, landowners, and development partners move complex projects from early vision and acquisition through planning and implementation.

I was born and raised in the South Carolina Lowcountry and have lived and worked in New York since 2003.

Most stories about real estate and entrepreneurship are told through the lens of success. I’m more interested in what happens along the way.

Over the course of my career, I’ve learned as much from the projects that became complicated, the assumptions that proved wrong, and the moments that required me to change course as I have from the things that went according to plan.

I created this space to write candidly about those experiences, and about real estate, land, capital, entrepreneurship, leadership, and the work of building something over time.

These are the lessons that rarely make it into case studies or classrooms: what happens when things don’t go according to plan, how you make decisions with imperfect information, and how you keep moving when the path forward changes.

This is a place for what I’ve learned, what I’m still learning, and what it actually takes to get it right.

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