Does it matter?

Not all real estate brokers are created equal.  

So, what makes me different from the average real estate agent? 

First, I'm a full-time real estate agent.  This isn't a hobby or something I do in my spare time.  This is my full-time job.  And one I take very seriously.  True professionals dedicate many hours and lots of energy to perfecting their craft.  They don't take shortcuts.  They don't sacrifice service for a quick buck.  And they constantly ask themselves what they can do better.

I don't measure my success by the millions of dollars of real estate I sell each year.  I measure it in the number of people I help...whether it's buying their first home, or downsizing from the home they raised their kids in, or buying sight unseen from across the country.  You can’t close two transactions a year and say you’re good at this job—you wouldn’t jump in an airplane with a pilot who only flies twice a year, would you?  The same principle applies to real estate agents.

Buying and selling property is complicated and a little mysterious because a lot goes on behind the scenes.  My husband and I had bought twice, and sold once, by the time I started my real estate career, but I hadn’t gained a good understanding of what it involved.  There was a lot of paperwork, and a lot of money being thrown around, and in the end, we had a place to live, but that was the extent of my understanding of the process.  And not understanding something that cost so much money made me nervous.  I didn’t want to simply trust that my real estate agent, a person we'd never worked with before, was going to take care of things in a way that was best for me and my family.  I need more control than that.

Having come from a career in Human Resources, where my focus was training, I saw an opportunity - maybe I could make more sense of the process and make it more transparent.  It seemed more intuitive that buyers and sellers work with someone they could call a "partner" in the process, rather than place so much blind trust in a stranger and how well they understand what buying and selling meant to them.  So, I jumped.  And after interviewing many offices in the South Puget Sound, I found a brokerage that was just as interested in raising the industry bar as I was.  I haven't looked back and that transparency is how I approach every transaction - whether my clients have never bought or sold, or have done it dozens of times.

A real estate transaction can be very complicated - pages and pages of contracts, all kinds of people involved, timelines that are moving targets, negotiations to get the contract, more when you’ve secured the contract, emotional buyers, emotional sellers, and even some emotional agents.  There's a satisfaction I get in keeping everything organized and moving in the right direction - it can be an intellectual obstacle course.  And when I win a contract for a buyer WITHOUT having the highest bid - what a rush!  

But what drives me in this business is the people and their stories.  Without people, this is just trading commodities - and HOME is so much more than that.  And it's because of that emotional connection people have to their homes that a real estate transaction is more complicated than any other investment you'll make.

At the end of the day, my objective is to help my clients identify their goals and the next steps involved in achieving those goals.  First and foremost, that begins with listening.  But this is a very competitive business too - there were 2700 agents that closed a transaction in Thurston County in 2019.  And no doubt there were more that wrote offers and didn't win their contract.  

But that's why raising the bar, and doing what's right for my clients (even if that means I don't get to sell a house) is the underlying thread to everything I do.  

Every day...

Even on the weekend...

And holidays...LOL

Well, you get the picture.  🙂  

Because I believe real estate is not about sales.  It's about relationships and people...and how we work together to support one another and the communities we live in.