About
Eleven years, one peninsula.
How a downtown-brokerage transplant became the agent West End sellers call first — and why she has no plans to expand beyond the neighborhoods she actually knows.
The Beginning
She started in the basements, not the listings meetings.
Nora got her license in 2015 and joined a downtown Portland brokerage that handed new agents the inspections nobody else wanted to attend. For two years, that meant a lot of time under West End houses with a flashlight, learning the difference between a foundation crack that matters and one that's been stable since 1962.
By the time she started representing buyers on her own, she'd seen more knob-and-tube wiring and horsehair plaster than most agents see in a decade — and clients noticed she could explain both without alarming them or glossing over them.
Founding Anchor & Ash
Built to take fewer clients and know each one better.
In 2021, Nora left the downtown brokerage to open Anchor & Ash — deliberately small, deliberately focused on five neighborhoods rather than the whole county. She caps her active client load so every buyer and seller gets same-day responses, not a rotating cast of assistants.
The name comes from her grandfather's boatyard on the Fore River, where an anchor and an ash oar hung side by side above the workbench — one for staying put, one for moving forward. It felt right for a business built on both.
Credentials
Background & designations
Designated Broker
Maine Real Estate License #RE9912B, active since 2015. Owner and principal broker of Anchor & Ash Real Estate.
260+ homes closed
Concentrated almost entirely within Portland's peninsula, Deering, and the Casco Bay islands since 2015.
Greater Portland Board of Realtors
Active member since 2015; serves on the board's historic-properties advisory committee.
Talk with Nora directly
Every consultation is with Nora — not a junior agent or a call center.