Facebook
X
Pinterest
Copy Link
I got back into real estate after Tom died because, well, this had been the original plan. I was going to get my license and sell the house and find us another place to live, and if that went well, continue selling with my newfound knowledge and experience. But what do they say? “If you want to make god laugh, tell her your plans.”
She was hysterical.
It was a turbulent time to say the least, the two months dealing with Tom’s sudden diagnosis and swift decline from pancreatic cancer. And then when he died a big void to face and fill, rebuild. I picked up the pieces that had fallen in the cataclysm and one of those pieces was the real estate plan.
The plan worked in theory but not in practice. Real estate like the rest of the world had changed a lot in the past 27 years when I was last in it although the gist was the same.
What was not the same was just walking into a brokerage with a license and getting a desk and thrown into the business. Back then, there was no systematic training, but training as needed, explanations, advice, and colleagues’ examples.
Now brokerages wanted you to have experience before they took you on because there was so much to learn. Others would hang your license but how much help would you get? It looked like a jungle out there.
I signed on to Windermere because they had a training program, and because that’s who I worked for in the past when it was my local real estate office with a storefront in north Portland, Oregon. It just looked like someplace I might like to work (it called me) and it was. My managing broker (all new licensees back then and still today must work under a supervising broker) was a woman in her early 50s and generous with her time as needed. One time after I thanked her, grateful for her help through yet another transaction, this one particularly fraught, she took it in stride. “You slay one dragon,” she said, “and there’s another one right behind it.”
Besides the mechanicals, real estate is mostly problem solving. The program and office I’m in, Summit, is on the job training for new licensees with structured on-going education and not one but three managing brokers, for backup, who are as supportive and responsive as Donna was.
Summit can last as long as two years, just depending on how you work it. I’m wading in slowly, which is just fine for me. It gets me out of the house, to meetings, touring properties, and keeping in touch with people. Filling the void. Curiously though the more it gets filled, the bigger it gets.
Life keeps expanding.
I got lucky a few months after joining Summit when a friend threw me a sale. It was to represent her selling her condo to a neighbor in her building. In real estate terminology: an “off market sale” to an “identified buyer.” They had agreed on a price, and they just needed brokers to write it up, get it through the hoops, and make it happen. That sale went through fine, but I was reminded of the stress of holding a deal together.
Stress and satisfaction. Stress in having to move quickly. Time is of the essence in real estate after all. There are the usual hoops to get through (financing, title, appraisal and inspections) as well as others depending on the circumstances. Everything and everyone is using technology now – way fewer hard copies but a lot more forms to complete online (at times I felt like I needed a form to breathe). Staging that was just an experimental thing 27 years ago is now de rigueur. Buyer inspections were optional and unregulated, now the inspection industry is regulated, and while still optional, sellers are often providing them to help with the sale. There’s more transparency, and then there’s AI seeping into everything.
It’s a different battlefield to be sure, but I’m happy to be back in it.
Bring on the dragons!
