Four Generations Selling the Marco Island Dream

With the recent addition of Emma Needles, a recent graduate of University of Central Florida, the Needles family can now claim a history of four generations in the real estate business on Marco Island.

It all started in 1969 when venerable Realtor Marv Needles was hired by the Deltona Corporation, the original developers of modern Marco Island. He actually preceded his mother, Irene Needles, whose brief real estate career on Marco he inspired.

"When I opened my office, she got her license,” Marv said. "She worked under my brokerage for a year or so, then two years for Rutenberg Homes, who had two model homes on the island. I think she just decided since I was in real estate, she was going to get into it. We came to Marco about the same time.”

Sandwiched between Marv and Irene and Emma Needles is the dynamic brother-sister real estate team of Scott Needles and Stacy Needles Witthoff, who have been top producers for decades. Marv shakes his head when he thinks about how proud he is of his family's history in Marco Island real estate.

“Unbelievable,” he said. "Tell me how many people have the opportunity to do that? I remember when Scott and Stacy first graduated from Florida State University. They were going to get out of town and said, ‘We'll come back on the holidays and visit you.' And one by one, they came back. Scott came back after graduating and working in Orlando."

“I was selling security systems,” Scott said, “for about six months."

“Door to door,” Stacy interjects with a laugh.

"They don't answer the door very well in Orlando,” Scott said. "Saw a lot of dogs chasing me.”

When Scott returned to Marco, he began his real estate career in an unusual way.

"I got the contract to market the Calusa Marina down in Goodland,” Marv said. "And I needed somebody to be on site. I was up in Orlando and took Scott and his girlfriend out to dinner and was telling him about it. A week after I left, he called and said, ‘Have you filled that position yet?' So he packed up and he and his girlfriend moved back down and he went to work down in Goodland."

“I was in a trailer in the middle of nowhere,” Scott said.

"And he got his real estate license,” Marv said.

“I started doing sales after that,” Scott said. "That was in 1994."

“A good golfing buddy of mine bought the property and told me he was going to put some floating docks in and was going to be selling the units and wanted me to handle the marketing of it,” Marv said.

"There was nothing there,” Scott said. "It was docks and a trailer at that time."

“My friend wanted me to come up with the name and everything else,” Marv said. "So I went to the county and they said, ‘Well, no more pelican developments.' So we picked the Calusa name and ran with that. And it's been there ever since."

“It was $30,000 for a dock,” Scott said. “They're probably over $100,000 today. I sold a few. I basically sat in a trailer and waited for people to come by. You just had to get the right person, a boater that wanted to live on their boat."

Stacy’s experience in Orlando wasn’t ideal, either. She had served an internship at SeaWorld, finished her senior year at FSU, and returned to work at SeaWorld.

"I had to work a couple jobs just to make ends meet,” she said.

She told her dad that she thought Marco Island would be a good place to raise a family.

“That was after the restaurant I worked at got robbed,” she said, "and then my car got broken into the next week. I said, 'I'm out of here.’”

Stacy moved back to Marco and took a job at The Charter Club of Marco Beach.

"I was figuring out what I wanted to do with my life,” she said. "I knew I didn't want to live in Orlando. I came back to work on the beach and try to figure it out. Then I got my real estate license."

Fast forward to 2026, and the Needles family has now seen three members move back to Marco from Orlando.

“Emma just came back from Orlando,” Scott said of his youngest daughter.

"We all left Orlando,” Emma said with a smile. But unlike her father and aunt, Emma's return to Marco and a real estate career seemed predestined.

“As a kid, I was around it all the time,” she said. "My dad would always bring me to the houses he was selling and I would always ask to go see some houses. And then I went to college. I didn't know what to major in. The only thing I was interested in was real estate. So I majored in real estate, got my license, and now we're here.”

Emma and her boyfriend, Robin, himself a recent UCF grad, are joining the Needles team. Both Emma and Robin have held real estate licenses since 2023.

“Actually, I'm doing some training with her and Robin right now,” Marv said. "And they're both very hungry.”

Emma loves being trained by her grandfather.

"It's great,” she said. "It’s like I have all the information I need. We're just learning how to use the systems now and trying to figure out the best way to get new clients and stuff. He's a great teacher. Grandpa's good at explaining. And he has good stories to tell. So when he explains things, he gives a scenario he's worked with."

Marv has pretty much seen it all when it comes to the modern development of Marco Island. He likes to describe his start in the real estate business as that of a go-fer for Deltona and its founders, the Mackle Brothers. One of his first assignments was to pick up Frank Mackle Jr., Deltona’s leader, when he would fly onto the island. Back then, the landing strip was just a block off the beach in the area of modern-day Landmark Street.

“They would fly over from Miami because they had their own executive planes,” Needles told the Coastal Breeze News in a 2024 interview. "We had two company station wagons, and I would drive one of them and pick the Mackles up at the airstrip.”

Marv set the standard for the Needles family in his career as a respected Realtor and home builder on the island over the past 57 years. Needles left Deltona and started Port of Marco Realty.

"Larry Basik was doing the development,” Marv said. "I rented the space. My first office had been a motel room. I used the two desks that were in the motel room and then put the mattresses up against the walls. And that's how we got started. They were still doing construction when I started."

In 1973, Marv founded Flagship Realty, which he operated for decades. In 1984, he bought a lot on Collier Boulevard.

"I bought the lot with the plans of building a home for the Flagship company,” he said. "I built that and moved into it in 1984. We moved into Flagship in November, and in December, we moved into our house. That's where we still live.”

Ironically, he almost bought the lot next door, where McDonald’s, Marco’s first fast food restaurant, now stands.

“I had a contract to buy the lot that McDonald's is on,” he said. “It’s an irritating story how I lost it, because I would own that too. Somebody else bought it and put a McDonald's there.

A common misconception is that Marco Island didn’t allow franchise restaurants at the time.

"Well it wasn't that,” Marv said. “There were deed restrictions that didn’t allow drive-in restaurants. And when the attorney who was handling that got in touch with me and I said, ‘It says no drive-ins,'” they said, 'It doesn't say no drive-thrus.' So that's what they used and said, this is not drive-in restaurant. So that's how they pursued it. And the Civic Association didn't fight it, and that's how they got in.”

Marv can’t say whether he preferred home sales or homebuilding. He built 177 homes in the Marco area over his career.

"I got a lot of satisfaction, especially early on, building homes,” he said. "Because we were helping people get into homes that they normally couldn't get into. I remember somebody who has turned out to be fairly affluent here in Marco in business. They didn't have the money to close on the home that we were building. So I loaned them the money and said, ‘You can pay me when you want.' I had another one, probably the one that most sticks in my mind. She was a teacher and he was working for NAPA. He had worked up north for NAPA. And her folks lived down here. They had to loan the kids some money, because they didn't have the cash to do it. So I got them a bridge loan because they were selling their condo up north. Bank of America gave them a bridge loan on the property up there and here, so they would have the money to give to the kids to build the house. And then the husband got cancer. And I remember taking him into the house and the two kids and a little girl walking into the house. They turned around—and I get emotional thinking about it now—and they said, ‘We could have never done this without you.'

"Eventually, when we started building bigger and more expensive homes, it's like these people expected everything and then some, which I tried to provide, but it wasn't the same thing as really satisfying somebody emotionally.

“In real estate, listings and sales were kind of a challenge more than anything, as they are today. But I like the challenge of it, too.”

Then he turned to Scott and Stacy.

"I think they appreciate that too,” he said. “These two are probably one of the best, if not the best, two-person team in Collier County."

It didn’t happen overnight for Scott and Stacy. They started as rivals, then really saw their careers skyrocket when they became a team.

“They worked individually for a while,” Marv said, "and then they teamed up eventually."

"In 2000, we teamed up,” Scott said, “because we didn't want to compete with each other. It took a few years to get it going. There wasn't enough sales and money in just selling docks. So at some point, I had to switch over. And once we had the model home over on Delbrook, that's when Stacy came. Basically, we were working out of there at the beginning. Flagship had two model homes and we were basically working almost every day out of there. Then we started selling general real estate out of there for a couple years. We used the model to get to meet people and sell whatever we could. Then we teamed up together and now we don't really work with builders. We'll bring customers to builders, but we're not representing builders anymore."

“It took me a while to get going, too,” Stacy said. "In my first six months, I had a $28,000 sale. I went to my dad and I said, 'I don't think this is for me.' And he said, 'I need you to give it three more months. Just give it three more months.’"

"I remember saying, ‘Don't give up,’” Marv said.

“Then it took off, like literally,” Stacy said. "I sold one of the more expensive front units on the beach, which at that time was like $400,000. It was a front unit at South Seas. And then things just started to take off. But it took me a while.”

From that point on, Scott and Stacy were stars in the ERA franchise, a prominent global real estate franchising network.

“In 2004, we had one of our best transaction years ever,” Stacy said. "That was when we first took off, when the market was going through the roof."

“We had 140 deals, or something like that,” Scott said.

“I thought it was like 170,” Stacy said.

"That was 2022,” Scott said.

“He's the numbers guy,” Stacy said.

"She's more the marketing person and I'm more of a numbers person,” Scott said.

“I’m the team organizer and the marketing person,” Stacy adds. "He's more about the numbers and our goals and keeps us on track to do what we're supposed to do."

“They were consistently in the top ten of the ERA franchise,” Marv said proudly.

"We were actually number one at times,” Stacy said.

Marv came up with the Flagship name and initially ran the company as an independent.

"Then we bought the ERA franchise that we held for 20 years,” he said. "Then, when we were getting ready to cancel the franchise, and we were preparing to be independent again, I was approached by Phil Wood. He wanted to know if we wanted to merge.”

Phil Wood is the son of John R. Wood, founder of John R. Wood Properties, who has been operating in the Naples market since 1958. They are the oldest active real estate brokerage in SW Florida.

The Needles family had a decision to make. Marv’s dream had been to turn Flagship over to his kids.

"Well, that's what the intent was when we were getting rid of the ERA franchise,” Marv said. “It was going to be their company. They didn't want to manage because they were doing so well in sales. So they wanted me to just kind of manage the company, but it was going to be their company."

“We decided it was easier on hours worked and family,” Scott said. "And rather than trying to recruit other agents and be managers that way, it was more lucrative and better to focus on sales and not have to run the company. That was about the time that Phil Wood approached him. We all met and discussed it and decided it was a good move for all of us."

"Phil had heard that I was getting rid of the ERA franchise, and that's when he approached me,” Marv said.

“It was sentimental for all of us,” Stacy said. "It was a hard thing because I think we kind of all envisioned that we just would naturally take over and run the company. But, you know, looking at all facets, this is what was best for all of us."

"Phil Wood told me the primary reason he wanted to do this is because they were having trouble making inroads into Marco Island,” Marv said. “So he told me that it would be a natural for him to take over Flagship, bring us over, and then that would be a good intro for John R. Wood. Even though they were already here at the time, they weren't doing much."

At 83, Marv is going strong. In addition to his real estate pursuits, he plays golf three times a week.

"I'll never retire,” Marv said. "I mean, I still want to do it. I still like challenges."

“He still does a few deals,” Scott said. “He’s got a few deals going this year."

“I had a pretty good year last year,” Marv said, "and I’m having a pretty good year this year.”

And experiencing the next generation coming aboard has to be a boon to his career. In fact, he’s turned his office over to his granddaughter. There are not too many people around anymore who go back as far in Marco real estate as Marv.

"I don't know of any,” Marv said.

"You're the last man standing,” Scott tells his dad deferentially.

"I don't know,” Marv said, "I'm guessing that there's none of the original Deltona people around at all. I was probably the youngest of all of them. Because a lot of them had, I would say, anywhere from 10 to 20 years on me. I started just a couple of years after they kicked off. They kicked off for sales in 1965 and I started in 1969. There wasn't much going on in 1965 or 1966 either. What opened this place up was when the Jolley Bridge opened (in 1969). And then the next thing that really opened it was the Marco Beach Hotel (in 1970). Then all of a sudden, the throngs and the values on the market just took off."

Could this Marco history be part of Emma’s education?

"She'll get that,” he said. "I teach a program to all the new people coming in for their orientation. I have about an hour and a half program. I talk about the history and the value of it. I find frequently whenever I'm talking to customers, or anybody for that matter, about how Marco got started, I could talk for probably three or four hours on the history of Marco."

Emma got to witness an example of her grandpa’s connection to Marco’s history just the other day.

"It was cool,” she said, "because when we went to hand in the papers to join the Board of Realtors, I see his name's on the building. I was shocked. It feels like real estate's in my blood. Fourth generation, I don't know, I just want to make sure I keep carrying on the success. Be as good or better than my dad.”

Scott smiles and nods. He knows the teacher’s goal is always for the student to eclipse the teacher.

"Yes,” he said. “Absolutely."