Career switchers want work of selling homes
By Kristina Shevory
Seattle Times Eastside business reporter
seattletimes.nwsource.com
STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Kim Golik, center, an agent with John L. Scott Real Estate, shows a house’s patio to client Nancy Backman and her daughter, Bianca, 4, in Redmond. Golik, an agent for less than two years, switched from a hotel marketing career.
With two kids to support, Jerilynn Primero had a lot at stake when she left her job as a network administrator and went into real estate. But after a year of sitting in a cubicle and staring at computers all day, she knew she had to make a change.
"I really missed interacting with people," said Primero, who worked at Boeing before she went into the tech industry. "I thought high-tech was the smart choice, but I quickly learned it wasn't my passion."
She signed up for real-estate classes last spring, received her license in July and became an agent with John L. Scott Real Estate in Bellevue in September. She made the right decision, she said.
"I'm in control of how well I do," Primero said. "If I come in and work hard, it'll pay off. As a nine-to-fiver, I didn't get that kind of payback. Sure, real estate is a gamble, but it's a gamble on myself."
It's a gamble more people are taking. The number of licensed real-estate salespeople — the industry's entry-level position — jumped 6.8 percent to 9,059 in King County last year, state Department of Licensing figures show. Statewide, the number is up 13 percent since 2000 to 20,312.
Membership in the Seattle-King County Association of Realtors has jumped 20 percent in the past two years to 6,000 agents.
"The economy is the No. 1 reason for the increase in our membership," said Ginger Downs, executive vice president of the association. "As the economy has soured, we've seen an influx of new licensees coming into the area."
Carl Nutt, branch manager and broker for the John L. Scott office in central Bellevue, knows well how many are trying to break into the business.
He's been inundated with applications from people in high-tech, aviation and education, among other fields. Nutt says he spoke to more than 500 people last year through referrals and in his weekly career seminars. The quality of candidates is awesome, he said, but he has hired only 26 of them.
"The biggest challenge I have is people who don't understand how hard the work is," Nutt said. "They think this is something that they can just try. They don't understand the sacrifice they'll have to make to get into real estate. It takes two to three years to build up a referral network."
When Kim Golik left her job in hotel sales and marketing after 23 years to become a real-estate agent, she interviewed successful new agents and made sure she had enough money to live several months without selling a home. She called and wrote letters to everyone she knew to ask for their business.
Three months later, she made her first sale through one of those referrals. Now, 18 months later, she and her husband, an agent for seven years, have logged $20 million in sales together.
Last year, Golik was named rookie of the year for John L. Scott after she earned the highest gross commissions of any new agent in Western Washington. She would not say how much.
Golik, based in John L. Scott's Bellevue office, has friends baby-sit her clients' children in a pinch, gives housewarming gifts to new buyers and plants primroses in their yards.
"All those little extra touches I learned in the hotel industry really make people feel appreciated," Golik said. "I found out in the hotel industry that if you take care of people, they'll take care of you and tell everyone they know."
New real-estate agents face several upfront costs: a laptop computer, pager, business cards and at least $3,000 for a license, agents said.
And although many jump in despite those costs, about half quit during the first year, Nutt said, most returning to their previous professions.
Not having a paycheck to rely on twice a month has been a "bit of a shock" for Tom Maider. As a former salesman of hospital imaging equipment, he was used to his company car, expense account and salaried position. He didn't have to think about budgeting to support his wife, who works part time, and his 2-year-old child.
But over the past five years, he often thought about real estate, partly because of his mother and brother, both former agents.
"I had a fine job for 10 years, but I wanted to do something new and exciting," said Maider, an agent with Windermere's Sandpoint office. "I was traveling several times a week, and I wasn't seeing my wife and child as much as I would have liked.
"Now I'm home with them every night, and my quality of life has improved. And isn't that the most important thing?" |
