RALEIGH — "I can show you more about downtown in 30 minutes than you can learn in a week."

That said, Ann-Cabell Baum Andersen throws her new BMW sport utility into gear and, rapid-fire, starts the sales pitch for living in downtown Raleigh that has made her the area's most successful residential broker.

"You should see the view from the top floor," she says while cruising past The Dawson, a 58-unit condominium building under construction near Nash Square. "The north view is all church steeples."

Then she starts ticking off restaurant options for the neighborhood as she heads toward West Street and the site of the future Triangle Transit Authority station.

"This will be a new residential and commercial center for the city," she says, slamming on the brakes to greet a client who'd bought a condo from her. "Hi honey," she yells out the window, before heading blocks away to Person Street to point out more stores and shops.

No one sells more townhouses or condos in downtown Raleigh than the intense 37-year-old, say developers who have projects there. By selling people on downtown living, Andersen has in turn made herself a nice living, selling 50 to 75 units a year for a six-figure income.

Those who know Andersen describe her as one of downtown Raleigh's biggest boosters. She works on revitalization efforts and promotes the area with a Web site, www.downtownraleigh.com, that she supports. Both efforts obviously have helped her business but she is almost evangelical in her desire to attract people to the city's core, long considered key to the area's rebirth.

For years, she lived downtown -- at the Cotton Mill on Capital Boulevard and at Park Devereux on Dawson Street next to the fire station -- moving only when she married two years ago. Her stockbroker husband worked in California and made her agree to move into a house in return for relocating to Raleigh.

"That was part of the deal," Andersen says. "I'm a condo dweller at heart."

Andersen estimates she has sold or resold nearly 400 townhouses and condos since the mid-1990s and last week began marketing 66 condos that are part of Progress Energy's $100 million downtown mixed-use expansion.

"She's successful, and Raleigh's a better place because of her," said her boss, developer Roland Gammon, who got the downtown housing market moving when he developed the 50-unit Cotton Mill condo project in 1996.

It's hard to imagine that more than a decade ago nobody would give Andersen a full-time job.

Fresh out of N.C. State University with a marketing degree, she applied for jobs across the Triangle, but employers weren't interested.

"My $60,000 marketing job wasn't there," Andersen said. "I didn't realize you had to have experience."

Andersen got part-time work instead. She split days selling clothes at Belk, working as a bartender and a nanny. By chance, she landed a fourth part-time job working six hours a day for Gammon as a receptionist.

Working with Gammon introduced Andersen to real estate development. Then in 1992 an acquaintance mentioned that a house in Apex would be torn down unless someone moved it. Andersen, by then working full time for Gammon, bought the house for $1 and spent about $100,000 to move it five blocks and renovate it.

"I learned to frame a wall, and electrical and plumbing," says Andersen, who turned around and sold the home for a $25,000 profit. After that experience she was hooked on real estate.

Andersen became interested in downtown projects when Gammon developed the Cotton Mill and, in 1997, a 12-unit townhouse development on Martin Street. Sales at those two projects were handled by Jewell Parker, a broker with York Simpson Underwood. Andersen credits Parker with teaching her the ropes. Both women say only good things about each other even though Parker is probably Andersen's main competitor for downtown condo sales.

"She was a quick study, a hard worker, had a good personality and would do anything you asked her to do," Parker says. "I hadn't thought of her as a competitor -- we're both just in the real estate business and we work as hard as we can."

But when Gammon developed Governor's Square on Person Street in 1999, and a year later Park Devereux on Dawson Street, it was Andersen who oversaw sales.

Andersen has a network of former clients and has a strong advertising presence, Gammon said, including the Web site that lists downtown restaurants, nightspots and housing.

"She works very hard, she works smart and she has a certain quality and Jewell has the same quality -- they are very loyal to clients," Gammon said. "They don't care whether its a hundred-thousand-dollar property or a million-dollar property, and it breeds a lot of [customer] loyalty."

How good a saleswoman is Andersen? Consider that Gregg Sandreuter, who is developing The Dawson and is Gammon's main downtown competitor, has hired Andersen to market his condos -- even though she's still working as Gammon's sales manager.

"She's the best," Sandreuter says. "She's energetic, intelligent and knows the market and is dedicated to The Dawson." Andersen has 29 of the 58 units under contract.

Keeping up to date

Andersen, who says she regularly puts in 12-hour days, also spends a good deal of time learning about new nightspots and restaurants downtown.

"Been to Nana's [Chop House] yet?" she asks a visitor. "You should sit at the bar, have an appetizer and watch the crowd."

Margaret Mullen, president of the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, a booster organization, says Andersen puts in many hours as one of the group's directors and on the board of Artsplosure, which sponsors First Night, Raleigh's New Year's Eve event complete with acorn drop.

"She always asks that you look at issues important to residents, to the younger generation," Mullen says, "and she's worked tirelessly to keep that big [First Night] event going on. It's a huge benefit to downtown."

By the way, Andersen also sold Mullen two homes, one in Five Points where Mullen and her husband live and a condo under construction in The Dawson.

"She's fabulous," Mullen says. "She takes care of everything. She was there for the inspection, I didn't have to be there, she did all the comps, recommended a bank, a lawyer, told me where I could get a cleaning lady and where I could buy rugs."