Sneak Peek: ‘Extreme Buyers Club’ Lands a Boeing 727 and Creates the Ultimate Rental

Noel Collier’s real estate superpower involves diving headfirst into her clients’ unique lifestyles to understand why they love what they love and do what they do. She then puts that insight to work in finding the property of their dreams — and Extreme Buyers Club matches her step for step on each one-of-a-kind search.

She flew to El Paso, Texas, to join married educators Ismael and Ruth Lara on a technically terrestrial adventure that was actually all about taking to the sky. Ismael caught wind of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy an abandoned Boeing 727, so he plunked down $10,000 to do just that. He and Ruth needed Noel’s help finding a parcel of land to park their unique acquisition; she then coached them through converting it into a field-trip destination for local schoolchildren that would fund itself via stints as a short-term vacation rental. This project had a lot of moving (and no-longer-moving) parts, but Noel knew just what Ismael and Ruth had in mind — and in their hearts. Ready for a closer look at their flight of imagination?

“I see the value in everything,” Ismael explained to Noel. “Like this airplane. It was going to go to a scrapyard! It was one of those things that’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” This retired Boeing 727 had been abandoned for about 21 years before appearing on Ismael’s radar. Both he and Ruth work with children, and they each recognized the plane as a unique way to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education by bringing kids and parents out to interact with a massive, historic plane.

“A lot of kids in our community, they don’t even have that opportunity in their lifetime,” he explained. “So, it would be wonderful. Even if it’s not going to fly, I’d like for them at least to be able to see the engineering behind flight.”

That brought Noel to tears. “I actually did not get on my very first airplane until I was 22 years old,” she said. "So, I understand what you mean. Like, we did not have that access. So, I think that’s incredible.”