real estate career

Why Selling Sacramento Real Estate Isn’t a Job

Here is why selling Sacramento real estate isn’t a job. Business happens night and day, 7 days a week. There are no set work schedules for a successful Sacramento Realtor. Many of our clients, though, typically work an 8 – 5 schedule. This means meetings and telephone conversations with clients often happen on weekends and evenings.

There are daily tasks that do happen throughout the 8 – 5 time frame. Agents deal with bankers, title companies, appraisers, and inspectors communicating with us and scheduling appointments during typical workdays. Further, showings of listings are happening 7 days a week, 10+ hours a day.

Working in a real estate career for as many decades as me, well, I long ago determined that selling Sacramento real estate isn’t a job, it is a lifestyle. When I am going to the grocery store, or the bank, I’m still on call. If the phone rings, I take the call.

During holidays, family events, weddings, and birthdays, I’m checking email, and returning phone calls during restroom breaks. As I sit in my doctor’s office waiting for her to come in, I’m emailing clients or responding to inquiries. While I’m meeting with my accountant I am scanning my email the entire time. I always have my laptop or tablet with me. I may need to respond to an offer on a moment’s notice.

Working as a Sacramento listing agent, I fully commit to market and sell a client’s home. Being available is a responsibility we take very seriously at Weintraub & Wallace. If we are busy during the day with appointments and we have work that needs to be completed, we burn the midnight oil. I work many nights until midnight, and I’m happy to do it. Our clients know how hard we work and that’s why we have hundreds of 5-Star reviews.

Our clients know if I’m not out in the field on appointments, I’m at my command center working. When I power down my computer at night and all my tasks are completed, this official end to my day gives me a great sense of accomplishment. I love the real estate lifestyle. I’m passion about it and I can’t imagine doing anything else for a living.

I once sold a listing on Christmas day. Who looks at a home on Christmas? A serious buyer looks at all times of the year, because buying a home is her # 1 priority, so yes, even on Christmas! Those sellers were amazing. They left the home with a ham in the oven and went across the street while the buyers looked at their home in Folsom. The buyers wrote an offer that day and we had it sold that night.

Buyers who are looking for a home are not thinking, ” Ok, well, we won’t look today as it is a holiday.” They are looking for a home day and night. They drive neighborhoods and search on all the websites, they want to be first to respond. That’s the buyer I want to make an offer on one of my listings as they are serious!

I can’t say all Realtors believe selling Sacramento real estate isn’t a job, it is a lifestyle. I can’t even get some of them to call me back. It is sad, but true. Today, I have been waiting all day for a counter offer. Triple phone calls and three texts to this agent and I still do not have it. Who practices real estate sales like this? Well, someone who has another job. There are dual career part-time Realtors, they make up a huge part of our industry.

Something has to give when your primary focus is not selling homes. More than not the part-time real estate sales take a back seat to the primary full time 8 – 5 job. Many Realtors consider selling Sacramento real estate as a means for extra income, not because their livelihood depends on it. There are no shortcuts to success.

If you are looking for a full-time real estate practitioner who responds to inquiries, and answers the phone night and day, call Weintraub & Wallace Realtors today at 916-233-6957 Our team is committed to providing top shelf service to our clients 7 days a week!

— JaCi Wallace

Weintraub & Wallace

Why Do People Start a Real Estate Career?

Laura BurgardFew people know that I bought my first real estate brokerage at age 26. That’s sort of an anomaly, especially for a woman back in 1978. It’s even odder today because there are so few young people in real estate. Why, according to the National Association of REALTORS, the median age of a real estate agent today is 57. I imagine, however, that due to the troubled state of our economy, that median age is about to change.

Why do people start a real estate career? I’ll tell you why but agents aren’t gonna like it. They go into real estate because they can’t get a job doing anything else. That’s the truth. They are misfits. They either can’t conform to the outside workplace or else they can’t get a job.

It used to be mostly the rebels who sought out real estate careers, because in the 1970s, an agent didn’t need even a high school education. It was only over the past dozen years or so that education requirements for brokers were put into place. Today, to get a real estate license in California, apart from passing an examination, applicants must also complete a series of 3 real estate classes and be fingerprinted / checked by the F.B.I. As long as a person doesn’t have an arrest record (and there’s some question about that), just about anybody can get a real estate license.

I came into the business because I was already had a real estate career as an escrow officer. I was swamped revamping deals by helping agents salvage their blown-up transactions due to 18%-and-rising interest rates when I suddenly realized I was on the wrong side of the business. On top of this, I had completed real estate and escrow courses, carrying 20 credits a year, through a community college in Orange County, California, while working full-time at a title company. Not your normal Sacramento real estate agent entry to the business.

But today, we have a wide spread of unemployed people, kids graduating from college who can’t find a job, no matter what. Kids struggling to make it through college who can’t graduate because they can’t get into the necessary classes. On the other end of the spectrum, we have the over-50 group getting laid off. Companies can hire cheaper labor if they can dump expensive overhead. There is little loyalty between employees and corporations. It seems that the majority of people employed full-time are those in-between the 20-year-olds and 50-year-olds.

This means we’ve got this huge group of young people and all of us older people who can’t find work. I see that Warren Buffet is concentrating on young people, trying to pull them into the business. That’s a smart move. That’s what I’m telling my niece to do. Go into real estate. Start a real estate career. She might find that she has a passion for the business. She’s outgoing, personable, smart and hard-working. She seems to gain considerable personal satisfaction from helping other people.

The money is nothing to sneeze at, either.

You hear that, Laura?

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