Showcasing the lowest of low bars for entry into the real estate business, I went to real estate “school” at night. When I was in high school. I went to high school during the day and then real estate school during the night, and this was my own decision. Looking back, it was stupid of me to do so. Having carved out a pretty little niche in this business doesn’t deliver me from questioning my rush to grow up. Friends were goofing around, flopping from college to college, home on Christmas break, home for the summer to play, and I was at work. I remember those first days and years somewhat fondly, but mostly I look back and wonder how anyone trusted me to work with them.
From a young age, I marveled at my father’s ability to place a drive by value on any home. We could be driving anywhere around town and I’d ask him, on the spot and without warning, what that corner house would be worth. With a slight hesitation he’d tell me, and that, to me, was the God’s honest truth and the most accurate reflection of value that anyone had ever assigned to a home. I saw this ability as a mythical skill, though now I see clearly that he may have put a $150k valuation on a $100k house, but actual accuracy mattered little then.
And when I started working on that day in August of 1996, I sat at my desk, shoved off into the corner of my dad’s office, and waited. When the phone would ring, I would sometimes answer it, but I would always, every time, stare at it, wondering who it might be and what uncomfortable admission of ignorance they may trick me into uttering. My dad was teaching school then, as he always did, and he’d stop in for lunch to check his messages. It must have been fun for him to have a secretary of sorts for the first time in his life. One day, Herb from the muffler shop told me that I wouldn’t have much luck selling real estate, on account of my age and all. That was nice of him.
When I finally did sell a home or two, it was exciting. The checks were small and they were random, but they were more than enough. Two or three years in I was making a living wage, selling homes mostly for people my parents knew and selling some for people who I had just met. Clients would talk to me about letters that I would write them, and they’d sort of pat me on the head and ask if my dad helped with the writing. I’d tell them that he hadn’t helped, and they wouldn’t believe me. And one day at an association meeting some woman who I didn’t know came up to me and asked if I was in college. I told her that I wasn’t, and she sort of patted me on the head and told me that I need to go. That same woman now tells me how much she loves my magazine each summer, and she wonders aloud where I learned to write.
Quickly, a year turned into two and then into ten and now into fifteen. I traveled to take more classes, to learn about different facets of the business, but mostly to try to add little credentials after my name that no one cares about. (GRI, anyone?) A possible job has turned into a career, and jeans have replaced the suit that a very young me wore in the photograph up there. Precious, right? But this is less about me today and more about what it takes to be a proper agent. I made a mistake on a contract a couple weeks back. It was devastating to me, as I pride myself in accuracy both in advice and in execution. But the mistake reminded me that I’ve had a lifetime mostly free of them, and for that I am thankful today and will be thankful a week from today.
When I started selling real estate, I played the part. I sat by the phone and talked on it. I emailed people, but only once in a while. Malcom Gladwell has a powerful theory that says it takes ten years of doing something full time, all the time, to master it. If you had asked me about that in year five of selling real estate, I wouldn’t have agreed with Malcom. Yet most customers believe their agents when they tell them that their experience is enough and it is varied. One year, five years, whatever- it’s enough. When buyer’s call a real estate office on a Saturday and speak with the agent who answers, there’s a good chance that agent on the other end is as I was in 1996, sitting by the phone, dressed the part, ready to play agent. I knew little then as they know little now.
The real estate business is much more about who you know than it is about what you know. To dissect a market and find true value should be the most valuable asset in an agent’s skill set, but it isn’t. We’d like to think it is, that skill is important and a deep, time honed understanding of the market is the key to success, but it isn’t. I’m lucky to have lasted fifteen years in a business that chews up the ignorant and the otherwise distracted with ease, but only in the last five years can I admit to fully understanding the business. My father taught me what I needed to know about real estate. That lady in the classroom on those winter nights in 1995 taught me the difference between fee simple and leasehold. Jackson Browne would have you believe that time is the conqueror, but my experience tells me that time is the ultimate teacher.