All of My Friends Are in Real Estate or in Jail

Elizabeth Weintraub, Ginny Gorman and Joan Cox at Ella.

All of my friends are in real estate or in jail, I like to say. Of course, I’m only half kidding. To the best of my knowledge, I don’t know of any friends who are in jail. Just about every person in my life is in real estate in some way or another, with the exception of a handful. I have relationships with real estate agents all over the country. I met them like I meet most people nowadays: online. With some people, you just click, and when you share a common passion for real estate, it’s even more interesting.

Above are two of my friends who came to Sacramento on Tuesday on their way to Napa and Monterey. Joan Cox is a real estate broker from Denver. I used to live in Denver, but that’s not really what Joan and I have in common because Denver has changed so much since the 1970s. We both love our careers and much of what we do is familiar, even though we practice in a different state.

When my husband and I flew to Cuba a few years back, we had a stopover in Denver on Christmas Day. It was Joan who drove out to the airport to meet up for brunch. The thing about meeting people online is often they are exactly as they appear online when you meet them in person, and Joan is definitely one of those people. I don’t mind it that all of my friends are in real estate. I find it a benefit. Because real estate makes up such a big part of my life. I basically devote maybe three hours a day to myself, 12 hours to real estate, and I sleep for the rest.

Joan Cox met Ginny Gorman online at the same website where all the real estate agents blog on Active Rain. I met Ginny online but did not realize that she and Joan were fast friends. Joan has been out to Rhode Island to visit Ginny as well. So now the two of them are on vacation in California. I think when people go into this profession, it’s not unusual to only hang around others in the profession, because real estate is all that encompassing.

After introducing Joan and Ginny to our cats, we had dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Ella Dining Room. There, sitting right in front of us at Ella was John Shirey, Sacramento’s former city manager. I could tell my husband wanted to say hello, as he knew the guy from Cincinnati. Before my husband was pretty much forced out of journalism and went to work for the state, he had worked the police beat for the Cincinnati Enquirer, which is where he met Mr. Shirey.

My husband would never say all of my friends are in real estate. Most of his friends are in a different occupation all together. But I think my friends are just as interesting. Plus, we refer business to each other. Clients are always asking if we know a good agent just like us in another state. This is a fabulous referral network among friends. Much better than plucking some obscure agent nobody knows. If you need an agent in another state, just ask me. I can probably point you in the right direction. Because all of my friends are in real estate.

Photo above is Sacramento Realtor Elizabeth Weintraub, Denver real estate broker, Joan Cox and Coastal Rhode Island Realtor Ginny Gorman.