Hey, I’m Porter Fratzke. I’m a fifth-generation Bendite, which is a rarer thing to be every year. My family put down roots in Central Oregon before the roundabouts, before the breweries, before anyone thought to put “destination” and “Bend” in the same sentence. I grew up here the old way, outside until dark, on trails and rivers I still walk today, in a town where you knew the names behind the storefronts.

Real estate was the soundtrack of my childhood. My family has been in and around the business for as long as I can remember, and I spent years of dinners listening to conversations about land, houses, deals, and the people attached to them. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was getting an education, not in transactions, but in what a home actually means to a family, and what it takes to guide someone through the biggest decision most of them will ever make.

Like a lot of people who grow up somewhere beautiful, I had to leave to understand what I had. I built a career as an audio engineer, work I loved, work that taught me how to listen closely, sweat details no one else notices, and stay calm when the stakes are high and everything is live. But the plan was always the same: come back to Bend, settle down, and raise a family in the most incredible place I know. Eventually, I stopped planning and did it.

Coming home, the next step was more obvious than I expected. What I’d loved about engineering was never really the equipment, it was solving problems for people who were counting on me. Real estate, it turns out, is that same job with higher stakes and better views. Getting licensed as a broker with Keller Williams Realty Central Oregon wasn’t a career change so much as a homecoming, twice over.

That’s the idea behind Ask Porter. This region is full of people with real questions, what their house is worth, which neighborhood fits the life they want, whether now is the time to make a move. Those questions deserve straight answers from someone who knows this place in their bones, not a pitch from someone who discovered it on a listing feed. I built my work around a simple invitation: ask me anything. I’ll tell you the truth, even when the truth is “wait.”

When I’m not working, I’m outside - hiking with my fiancé, skiing, or playing more pickleball than I’m willing to apologize for. I play chess, I’m a Christian, and my faith shapes how I try to treat every person I work with: honestly, patiently, without an agenda. Mostly, I spend my time with people. Meeting them, hearing their stories, figuring out how to help; that’s not a business strategy. It’s just the thing I’ve always been.

Five generations in, I get to help the next wave of families find their place in the town that made me. I can’t imagine better work.