10 Years and 520 Shows Later, Toby Tobin and WNZF Cross a Milestone of Real Estate Matters in Flagler

Ten years ago Don Tobin, better known to Flagler County and the world as Toby Tobin, had a conversation with David Alfin. Alfin’s real estate business was doing well. He was years from his run for Palm Coast City Council and the mayorship. He wanted to launch a radio show on WNZF with Tobin as his co-host. Tobin had established his name locally with GoToby, the real estate-focused website he started in 2006.

Tobin agreed. His first contribution was the name of the half-hour broadcast every Saturday and Sunday since on WNZF: Real Estate Matters.  Before long–a year and a half, or two or three, no one remembers–roles had reversed: Tobin became the show’s anchor.




Exactly 10 years and 520 shows later, Tobin has outlasted Alfin and two other co-hosts–Jason DeLorenzo, now the chief of staff in Palm Coast government, and Walker Douglas of Douglas Properties–and on today’s 10th anniversary, he was inaugurating his latest co-host’s tenure, Annamaria Long, the executive officer of the Flagler Home Builders Association.

It’s not a minor feat for Tobin. He’s 81. He’s survived a couple of serious health scares. But he’s been something of a local Cal Ripken of the airwaves, as powered by the work as he is by an optimism about all things real estate no mater the season, or the crash. (“The argument supporting continuing growth in Florida is incontrovertible,” characteristically goes the opening line of a piece that’s sat on his website’s landing page since January.)

He and his co-hosts may represent everything the county’s anti-development brigades revile, including some who just moved into brand new homes and want to shut the door behind them, but he keeps at it with a basic mantra: “The knowledge is out there. The facts are facts,” Tobin says. “And reality is reality. But the listening audience doesn’t get it. And that includes a lot of people who show up at city hall meetings, planning board meetings, and that read and post on your website. I don’t know if they ever will get it.” But he sees his job as a purveyor of facts, come what may.

“Toby has been consistent. He has been correct. He has been data driven, and he’s always been prepared,” Alfin said. “I think he has a heartfelt love for this form of media and I guess publication, you can call it. I think this filled the gaps in his Gotoby.com initiative. This really became the the umbrella for all of that.” As with all the Saturday lineup of what are essentially infomercials on WNZF, Alfin had started Real Estate Matters as a marketing expense he paid for, to improve his business brand, leverage it and contribute to the community. It didn’t quite pan out as that.




“Was ever concerned about my ROI? No. Did I ever get a deal from the show? Not that I remember. Did I enjoy doing it? Absolutely,” Alfin said, recalling the early years with Tobin. ” Toby would come with a bunch of notes or pieces of paper. I came empty handed and we would banter, and what I think people enjoyed back then was it was not staged or practiced or rehearsed. It was all about–could I make some fun of Toby. Toby didn’t make so much fun of me. But just the banter back and forth, and we found that 30 minutes is like three seconds.”

Tobin didn’t know it as he and David Ayres, president of Flagler Broadcasting, huddled in Ayres’s office late this afternoon, talking with Long. But when Tobin walked into the studio to record his 521st show, Ayres had surprised him with cake topped with a small bottle of vodka (a gift from Ayres and Marc Gilliland, the producer), a card from the staff, and what should have been a reunion of hosts, though only Alfin made it. Douglas was plying Atlantic waters somewhere, DeLorenzo was probably readying for this evening’s City Council meeting. Reporters filled in for the no-shows, and Tobin, as understated as ever, recollected.

He’d moved to Palm Coast from Charleston, S.C., in 2000, a victim of the dot-com bubble burst back then, after a career with Bottomline Technologies, for whom he’d been southeast regional sales manager, and a brief consulting job in Alexandria, Va. He got his real estate license in 2004. Ayres had actually approached him in the early days of WNZF, trying to convince him to take on a morning show, five days a week, what was then the daily Free For All (later reduced to the existing weekly Free For All Fridays). That didn’t happen, but Ayres and Tobin stayed connected through Rotary and golf and eventually Real Estate Matters. “Toby was the guy for that,” Ayres said. “It’s such an important program, I learn a lot. It’s entertaining. And I think Annamaria is going to bring another entertainment factor to it.”

Long has been a guest on the show several times. “I like to bring new knowledge to our listeners,” Long said, “bring in interesting guests, use the data we have, the knowledge I have to help our listeners understand why real estate matters and what the numbers mean to them, what the data means and how it relates to our economy.”




For Long’s inaugural and Tobin’s 521st show, Tobin planned to compare today’s real estate and permitting numbers with those of 10 years ago, when the county and Palm Coast were just emerging from the great crash’s troth. Example: the median price of a single-family house back then was $161,250. It is now $369,000. There were building 36 permits issued this month back then. In the June just ended, 202. The numbers are all the stimulants Tobin needs. And with numbers like that, he may well be marking more milestones ahead.

He has an unusually counterintuitive answer about the secret of his longevity: “My my dad always told me that the best thing that could happen to a person is to have a chronic illness that’s controllable,” Tobin said. “The reason for that is that you see doctors often and you learn to listen to your body. And a lot of the issues I’ve had to deal with over the last 10 years have been the things that I caught early, either because I went to a doctor often, or because I do listen to my body. When I go see the doctor. I tell him–or her. And so I’ve just been fortunate. I’ve made it through a couple of things that would have killed me had I not address them.”