Decisive moments

Have you ever thought about making a career shift–not getting out of the real estate industry but doing something different, maybe shake things up a bit? These REALTORS® did, and they followed up their thoughts with actions. Here, they share their stories of decisions that changed their careers.

by Scott Williams    Everyone wonders at one time or another if they could create more success, more autonomy, more free time if only they changed some aspect of their work situation. Not everyone takes the next step, though, and acts to alter their career trajectory. These five REALTORS® did, and are reaping the rewards.

Leaving commercial real estate behind to start anew with new homes

Diana Miller’s "eureka moment" came not long after taking a job in the build-on-your-lot division of a homebuilder’s new-home center in Houston. The center, where potential homebuyers go for information on floor plans, prices, and neighborhoods, attracted an impressive number of visitors.

Miller, who spent 17 years in commercial real estate before moving to the residential side, realized that if one builder could draw so many people into a new-home center, she should be able to attract a crowd by providing the same services for several builders.

"I decided I wanted to get into residential real estate, but I didn’t want to do the traditional residential real estate," she says. "I wanted to come up with something new, something different."

Now, a little more than a year after opening The New Home Center in Sugar Land, Miller is drawing a 1.5% commission on $1 million to $2 million a month in new-home sales in Fort Bend County, without showing houses or dealing with lots of paperwork.

Like Miller, other REALTORS® have experienced defining moments in their professional lives–moments that dramatically improved their success, leading to higher incomes, more freedom, or more time to spend on their personal lives.

For Miller, who has been a broker since 1989 and worked for years as an asset manager for the Resolution Trust Corp. and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the move from employee to business owner has meant increased income, dropping her commute from an hour down to five minutes, and satisfaction from helping people buy a home, often for the first time.

Although the business took awhile to get started, Miller says she recorded her best month ever in February, with more than $2 million in home sales.

At The New Home Center, prospective homebuyers can get brochures, maps, and floor plans from 70 Houston-area homebuilders, along with information on Fort Bend County neighborhoods and school districts.

Customers leave with a complete buyer’s representative package containing a commission agreement and preprinted registration cards with their name and address and information stating that they’re represented by The New Home Center.

"A lot of people prefer to do the searching on their own as long as they know that what they’re going to go look at meets their criteria," Miller says.

Once a client finds a house, Miller negotiates the contract and, eventually, rebates to them a portion of the commission she earns on a new-home sale, giving homebuyers an incentive to return to her once they find a home.

Miller keeps overhead low. She leases office space in a shopping center, generally doesn’t drive customers around, leaves paperwork to the builders, and hands out marketing materials paid for and supplied by builders.

"All of their top marketing people come in to make sure we have their information in stock," she says.

Miller says her leap from commercial to residential real estate and setting up her own business couldn’t have been smoother. It came, though, after studying the residential market for eight months while working for a builder.

"I would say if you’re going to do it, do your research, and that was the reason I went to work for a homebuilder first," says Miller, who wrote an extensive business plan before going out on her own.

After years working for others, she’s on her own and loving it

Rita T. Wright, owner of Rita Tucker Wright Properties in Houston, experienced her career-changing moment when she realized she could compete with larger, more-established real estate companies as an independent real estate broker and owner.

Wright, a REALTOR® who worked 18 years for three major independents and spent three years in sales management, decided to go solo after her father’s death, because she wanted to visit her mother in New Mexico several times a year.

"My first concern was how to compete with the big guys. Second was–I’m a strong listing agent–how do I get my listings shown and appointments made without hiring a receptionist?"

The answer to her second concern came when Centralized Showing Service started business in Houston. The company makes appointments for individual real estate agents and some major Houston companies.

Another solution presented itself in the form of NAR’s Internet Data Exchange policy (IDX)–the mandate that multiple listing services allow members to list all MLS properties on their Web sites.

"That enabled me to really be competitive, because I could provide to my customers all the property available through the Houston Association of REALTORS®," she says.

Wright says she couldn’t afford to spend a lot of money to drive people to her Web site and, without a link to the Houston Association of REALTORS® site, wouldn’t be able to give clients 30,000 homes from which to choose.

"It allows me to give the same information level of service to my customers as a big company could," she says.

Wright says she planned on making no money her first year. Instead, she recovered her initial investment, which included six months of living expenses, and an additional 50%. She tripled her taxable income in her second year.

"I made more money in my second year on my own than I’ve ever made in my life, and I was out of the country for 10 weeks," she says.

Wright, whose husband works for an engineering construction company, traveled to Russia three times to see him and spent another two weeks with him touring Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. She also visited her mother several times.

"My blood pressure is lower, and I get to watch the birds in the morning in the trees outside my office," says Wright, adding that she doesn’t need to make as many transactions now as she did when she worked for someone else.

"I’m not paying somebody else’s overhead. I’m not paying someone to manage me. I’m not paying for someone to run around the country touting how wonderful my franchise or my brokerage is," she says. Wright is involved in a partnership with two other independent brokers to show and sell her properties when she’s away. "Without them, I wouldn’t be able to do this, that’s for sure," she says.

Picking up an assistant and a team along the way

Without a similar arrangement, Dwight Hale, broker/owner of RE/MAX Advantage in San Antonio, wouldn’t have been able to attend the recent National Association of REALTORS® Midyear Meetings in Washington, D.C.

Hale traveled to the conference while associates handled his listings back home.

Hale says he has had two "eureka moments" in his career. The first decisive change came in 1993 when Hale hired an assistant to help him break through the $100,000-a-year income barrier. He needed an assistant to do that, he says, but was reluctant to hire someone because he wanted that person to be perfect.

It was an instructor in a CRS class who made him realize he would never find the perfect assistant, and that a less-than-perfect assistant was better than no assistant at all. The assistant, he says, did everything Hale didn’t want to, which allowed Hale to focus on what he enjoyed and resulted in his working harder.

Hale says he focused on getting new prospects, which led to more income, and with his assistant taking care of matters that he tended to procrastinate over, his income became more predictable.

That sort of efficiency was behind another move that Hale made in 1998–what he describes as his second big change. He and another local broker, Dayton Schrader, formed a team that has grown to seven members, including an office manager named Debbie Blackerby, a marketing specialist, closing specialist, buyer’s agent, and an assistant who puts up signs and lockboxes and takes pictures.

"Dayton and I and Debbie don’t have to do the $9-an-hour labor; we’ve got other people to do that," Hale says.

The Schrader Group officially began business in June 1998 and almost immediately began to pay dividends. "Within five months, our numbers were going crazy, and yet I was still able to go on a two-week Christmas vacation," he says.

Hale says he got the idea for a team at a conference and decided to see if he could make more money than the combined $8 million to $10 million in annual sales that he and Schrader were recording. In the first year, they made one-and-a-half times that amount, and the next year topped the $20 million mark in sales. His success, he says, has translated into more money and more time to spend on travel, volunteering, and working with industry associations.

Taking charge to do it his own way

David Erard, owner of Erard & Associates of Austin, also spends more time working with industry associations these days. Erard experienced his "eureka moment" earlier this year when he got his broker’s license and opened his own real estate company.

That move allowed him to exert control over the types of services he provides to his clients and–now that he’s a broker who does the hiring–the types of people he works with. "The nice thing is that now … I’m in a position to … pick the right people to meet my business goals (who) have the same focus on taking care of their clients," he says.

Erard, who worked for small firms and a national franchise for a number of years before going out on his own, says becoming a broker/owner forced him to focus on the services he had been providing, what type broker he wanted to be, and the type of company he wanted.

"My goals are to have a greater financial production for this year than the past years and at the same time have equal or more time with my wife, who is having our second son in six weeks, and with my first son, who is now 18 months old."

Education and involvement pay off

For Andrea P. Sunseri, a REALTOR® with The House Company in Galveston, becoming president of the Galveston Association of REALTORS® and getting her GRI and CRS designations in 1993 led to great changes in her professional life. She realized that people considered her a real estate expert based on her credentials as president of GAR.

Sunseri says that before earning her professional designations, she spent several years just getting by. Taking courses, she says, not only gave her the education and credentials to attract and serve clients, it also jump-started her interest in the real estate industry.

"You get to network with REALTORS® who have been in business a long time and with new REALTORS® who are energetic," she says, describing the benefits of taking advanced real estate classes.

In her role as president of GAR, Sunseri was asked to write a real estate column for the Sunday paper–a move that cast her in the role of real estate expert to many in the community.

"More people thought of me as being an expert in the field because of the article in the paper," she says. "Whether or not I was didn’t really matter. People thought, If she can write about this subject, then she must know a lot about it."

It also got her name in front of potential customers, who, years later, remembered her columns. "Two to three years after I’d been president, people would walk up to me and say, ‘I saw your article in the paper,’ " says Sunseri. "The more they see you in public, the more you do in the community, the more business you’re going to get."

Sunseri says she now handles two to three times the business she once did, and wakes up every morning excited about her work. "And I know that’s a gift, because others are not excited about the position they’re in, and in the jobs they’re doing."

Scott Williams is a freelance writer in Corpus Christi.

Illustration © Brand X Pictures.

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