The Rarity Factor

Knoxville News-Sentinel - August 27, 2005

When developer Mike Ross was 13, he asked his father if he could have a newspaper route.  Dad said yes and a burgeoning business career was born.  If there was any lingering doubts, the youthful Ross quickly swept them away.

Three years in a row, Ross won the Parade magazine's "Young Columbus" competition, a national program that rewarded budding entrepreneurs with expense-paid trips to Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Portugal and many European locales for selling the most newspaper subscriptions.  When he was 22, Ross who grew up in Maryville,  turned his first real estate deal, buying a Louisville, Tennessee, lakefront farm -  a harbinger of future waterfront purchases - and selling it for $100,000 profit 29 days later.

"I was an ambitous kid, always chasing the brass ring." Ross said.  Today , Ross 56, applies that same youthful zeal to building Rarity Communities, Inc. one of East Tennessee's premier developers of upscale residential communities.