In our Heart Behind the Homes series, we are pleased to introduce you to the people who guide, design, build, and support each Brookline homeowner’s journey. 

Their care and respect for both the craft of homebuilding and the people they serve reflects what Brookline calls “the Brookline way”—a commitment to building with intention and creating homes that become the foundation for everyday life. 

“Every single person who walks through that door MATTERS.”

Walk into most show homes and the conversation quickly turns to square footage, finishes, and price points.

When you walk into a Brookline Home, you experience the polar opposite – you meet Polly Cockrell.

Before she ever talks about a floor plan, Polly wants to know about you.

Why are you moving? What stage of life are you in? What do you need this home to make possible?

“Every single person who walks through that door matters,” Polly says

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Because, for her, it’s never been about selling houses or hitting quotas. It’s about helping people find places where the most meaningful milestones in their lives will unfold.

A Full-Circle Journey That Led Back to Homes

Polly didn’t take a straight path into new construction sales. Though looking back, the clues were there all along.

“I grew up in sawdust,” as she puts it. Her father and grandfather were premier builders, and her mother had a designer’s eye that turned their home into a property that would get mistaken for a public park.

Before real estate, Polly served in the military as an armament specialist on the A-10 and later became a pilot. The experience helped shape the way she approaches her work today, grounding her in discipline, responsibility, and a deep respect for the people depending on her.

Real estate entered the picture in Polly’s life later on, when Barbara Corcoran – yes, that Barbara Corcoran of the television show, Shark Tank – spotted something in Polly.

While working at Corcoran’s apartment properties, Polly quickly stood out, consistently ranking among the top leasing agents across hundreds of properties. It confirmed what Corcoran had seen from the start: Polly had a natural ability to connect with people and was destined for a career in real estate.

But the traditional real estate path didn’t fully fit. General brokerage felt transactional, and her experience in large-scale production building wasn’t much different.

“I didn’t enjoy the salesmanship of it,” she explains. “Because it didn’t feel relational.”

She realized something important: she didn’t want to just sell. She wanted to build real connections with the people who were putting their trust in her to guide them through one of life’s biggest decisions. 

“I don’t do ‘the sales thing’ at all. I match people to product.”

If you walk into one of Polly’s model homes and you’re looking for a home that doesn’t fall within Brookline’s price range or portfolio, she won’t direct you elsewhere and show you the door.

Instead, she’ll sit down with you. She’ll open her laptop to search listings. She’ll explain the building process. She’ll teach you what questions to ask any builder, anywhere. “My goal is really to make them wiser,” she says.

Sometimes that means Brookline earns your business and builds your family’s next home. Sometimes it doesn’t. And Polly knows that. Either way, you leave knowing you mattered. As Polly puts it, when someone walks into the model home, “they’ve walked into our family’s house.”

Brookline doesn’t rely on national brand recognition or massive incentive packages to drive traffic. “Our brand recognition comes from how well we treat our customers,” Polly notes.

That also means the relationship doesn’t end once a buyer says yes. If you’re building from the ground up with Brookline, Polly walks you through every step of the process – from included features and upgrade options, to interior design packages, and exterior elevations.

Throughout the build, you’ll hear from the team regularly. If you’re relocating, Polly will personally send videos from the site. If you want inspections, they’ll help coordinate the scheduling and the on-site details. If your life requires accessibility adjustments such as widening doorways or modifying layouts, the team works with homeowners to make it happen in an inclusive and respectful manner.

After closing, your relationship with Brookline is just beginning. Brookline backs its homes with our 2-10 Home Buyers Warranty® (2-10 HBW), and homeowners often remain connected long after move-in day.

Why Working with a Family-Owned Home Builder Matters

Polly has seen the homebuilding and real estate industries from many different perspectives. What she’s found at Brookline feels different.

Instead of serving one role within a large corporate structure, she’s part of a female-owned and led, small business team where everyone knows each other’s names and what’s happening across the business. Land acquisition, sales, design, production, purchasing, marketing, and warranty aren’t distant departments operating separately – they’re working together, daily.

Polly describes it as a beehive. “We’re all right there together and we’re all pulling on the same end of the rope, all serious about our jobs, and we all care. I have so much respect for our team; I love these people. I see myself as the last person on the relay team to pass the baton to the buyer, but there have been so many serious runners before me, and I know if I don’t do my job well, I’ve let a great team down” she says. “Each one of our community managers does a great job and feels the same way.”

If she has an idea for a buyer, she can walk directly to the supply team. Buyer requests and ideas are addressed in real time by the right person or team, ensuring client advocacy is immediate and direct, without a corporate maze to navigate.

For homebuyers, that means means close collaboration, clarity with options, keen attention to detail, accountability, and above all, genuine care for the people Brookline serves.

Brookline builds approximately 80–100 homes each year, a scale that allows the team to stay closely involved in every stage of the experience. That intentional pace shows up both in the homes themselves and in how homeowners are supported along the way.

The Brookline Difference: Confidence in Where You Call Home

Polly says the work is about so much more than closing deals. It’s about helping people and families feel confident about where they’re going to live next.

With the Brookline team, she can do that the right way – with honesty and integrity – because she knows the homes, the team behind them, and the process that brings everything together.

“If you’re comparing builders, you’ll see incentives. You’ll see promotions. You’ll see price points,” Polly says. “But what you won’t always see is what happens behind the walls: how closely the team works together, how much thought goes into the plans, and how willing a builder is to adjust when real life calls for flexibility.”

At Brookline, that difference is intentional. And when you walk through the door, Polly makes sure you feel it immediately.