One Of My Dreams

I love real estate. Always have. I love going to open houses on Sundays and looking at houses. I love looking at what is for sale in my neighborhood (and in my old neighborhood in Australia) online.

My fave HGTV shows are Design to Sell, House Hunters (International), My First Place, Curb Appeal, etc. I love those shows.

I used to always say to a friend of mine when we were in Grad School, that all I really wanted to do was sell real estate. She wanted to own a flower shop. Neither of us are doing these things. Or what we went to grad school for. Go figure.

So, why am I not selling or doing anything in real estate? Well, a lot of has to do with real estate agents. No offense if you are an agent, but so many of them are super smarmy, money grubbing, liars. Not all, mind you. I’ve met, and know (and are related to) a lot of nice ones. But even still, very few will be up front and honest with you about a house. They are trying to sell it or get you to buy it after all, which is what pays them.

This is the problem. I know I couldn’t be that person. I could not sit there, all smiley-faced, about a house, that some naive young couple is about to put all their hard earned money into, that had a bunch of problems that they were just to inexperienced to see…so I could make some money. I couldn’t sleep at night doing that. We have a very successful agent in our neighborhood that will tell you how wonderful a house is even if a wall fell down while you were looking it (“Oh, that can be easily fixed”, she would chirp merrily, the smile never leaving her face). Can you tell how much I like her?

So, the other issue is being associated with that group of people, the unscrupulous ones. It’s something I will have to get over if I want to try it though. I will have to seek out the good ones and learn from them.

I could probably be a buyer’s agent, which is what we used when we bought our house. A buyer’s agent doesn’t sell houses, they only help you buy one. So, part of the double edge is gone. You are not selling any houses. You listen to a client and try to help them find the best one for them. Our buyer’s agent was a big help to us. He was older and pointed out things about houses we would have never thought about it. Some things we were willing to live with, but at least we knew what we were getting.

If I had the design skills, I would love to be a stager. I don’t know how many houses I’ve gone into where I think, “Don’t you watch HGTV?!”. I mean, it’s crazy. I helped my sister pack up and stage her house when they sold. It wasn’t fancy, but it looked TONS better when we were done with it.

I would also love to try my hand at house flipping. I live in a neighborhood that is full of that going on. It can be pretty fast money if you do it right and price it to sell. I see mistakes being made all the time, both in a house and with the pricing. People get greedy and the houses just sit because the flippers don’t understand our neighborhood. I am confident I could do a great flip…just not confident enough to put my money where my mouth is right now.

When our boys get older and are in school, I will probably look into pursuing these options a bit more. It’s something I would love to try my hand at. In the meantime, I will just keep watching the shows, practicing on my own house and learning.

What about you? Is there something you’ve always wanted to do, but aren’t doing? Why not?

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