Our Story of Success

There is so much to say about the passions and imagination that went into the founding of Ermine Lovell Real Estate. Ermine was from Virginia, white gloves and all, and married into Cape Cod Gentry…the Lovell Family of Menauhant, Falmouth. Among his family’s lands was Ten Acre Farm; a working farm where Ermine and her husband Hollis were able to combine his love of gardening with her love of nature and the open spaces of her new home, Cape Cod.

In 1935, this love of the land eventually transitioned into a real estate business. While Real Estate became her business, conservation became her passion. Ermine’s early fight for conservation, occasionally at odds with the Capes development, was initially under the guidance of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. She worked tirelessly to get her friends and clients to donate lands and to understand the need for preservation to go hand in hand with the business of development. 

Still working with the Massachusetts Audubon Society, Ermine formed a local conservation group called Salt Pond Areas Bird Sanctuaries. She was determined to conserve as well as to sell. In the 1980s, through sheer grit and determination, Historic Bourne’s Farm and The Knob, two prominent parcels of land in Falmouth were saved and added to Salt Pond’s growing catalog of properties.  

Through the post WWII boom years, many families that bought properties from Ermine were introduced to her conservation efforts and generously continued the spirit of preservation.

Francesca Parkinson joined the office in the ’80s, marveling at the amount of business that had been accomplished and the way in which it had been done. 

Ermine recognized that Francesca not only shared her enthusiasm for Real Estate and Conservation but that she also shared her business philosophy of high levels or service to clients and the community.