KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Jamie Parker Success Journey from Music Teacher to Real Estate

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

You're listening to Expansion, the podcast for EXP agents. Expand your skill. Expand your value. Here's your host, Glenn Sanford. Hey, everyone. Glenn Sanford here. And today on the Expansion podcast, I'm actually visiting with Jamie Parker from Atlanta, Georgia. I've been with EXP since 2018, five-time icon agent.

Welcome, Jamie. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast, Glenn. Oh, my pleasure and thanks for joining us. So maybe I think you've been in the business a few years. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about your background, how did you get started in real estate, you know, just that journey. Sure. So I've been in the real estate business for 17 years.

And what got me into the business is I bought one of my houses. And I saw how much money the real estate agent made. I was like, oh my gosh, I need to, like, it takes me three months to make that much money. My background is in teaching. So I was a public school teacher for 17 and a half years. I taught orchestra, taught middle schoolers. And I also taught general music. And I was also an instructional technology coordinator for a couple of years.

realized that that was not for me. I went back into music after that. Yeah, so I just started doing real estate part-time. So for seven and a half of my 17 and a half years of teaching, I was the part-time real estate agent back when all you could really do is sell HUD homes because that's when everything. That's how I kind of started was saying up to 12, 1 o'clock in the morning after I was done teaching for the day, helping people bid on HUD homes online and kind of started out that way.

And yeah, so what really also got me into real estate is I was at a marriage retreat. And the people that were running it, and this is very old school, they were like, husbands, if you don't make enough money for your wife to stay home, then you may want to think about a career change. And I'd already been kind of thinking about real estate. And yeah, so it just kind of prompted me. And shortly after my daughter was born, She's a miracle child. It took about, gosh, eight and a half years to get her.

And shortly after she was born, I started studying for my real estate exam while I was still teaching school and had a newborn in the house. And I'd see her crawling around the family room and I'd be online, online doing my real estate stuff. If you can only imagine how dry online courses were in 2006 in 2007 compared to today. Well, you know, online courses should get a lot better, especially with all the AI stuff. I've been watching some cool stuff with that. So how I got started, that's what kind of drove me.

And so then I was able to, in 2012, I was able to, I sold 23 houses as a school teacher. So my part-time was making double by full time. And I was thinking, well, if I had 40 hours a week back, what could I do? Right. So here we're. we are. I haven't had a paycheck since 2012. So 2012, you started 17 years ago, it started kind of on 2007, which was obviously the housing

industry was getting tougher, there was obviously more starting into short sales and you mentioned HUD homes. I wouldn't mind just diving a little bit into just. HUD homes, mainly because I think it's kind of top topical based on what's going on right now. What was the process or what is the process? Are you still do some HUD home business? Or have you sort of moved on? I have not done any in a long time.

I'd be honest with you, the motivation back in the day. It was a 5% commission back in 0708. So that was honestly my motivation. I was like, and you could, there were no listings. I mean, everything was REO. So I was a brand new agent. So really the only thing really I could do was bring buyers and find buyers to work with because, you know, being brand new.

So the process, basically, you would look online and you would just see kind of, there'd be deadlines for the houses. You'd show the houses. You'd send out maybe houses to your clients. Hey, this house is coming up. Are you interested? We'd go look at it. Then, okay, here's the deadline.

you want to bid, where's your top, where's your bottom, what would you like to do? So then you would wait literally till two or three minutes left in the auction, maybe even less, and try to try to see where everybody's kind of bidding in at and try to put your best foot forward. You had to do everything, like everything was broken down. Even, I know this is a hot topic right now, but even your commissions, you actually had to put in there everything, the whole nine yards. Everything was about the net price that was going to be for the,

for the seller for the HUD property and then you would get an email hopefully that night or the next morning hey you won the auction and then you had 48 hours to literally bring wet paperwork not you can there was no electronic you literally had to go down I had to go down 30 45 minutes from my house into the city to actually drop it off where you could FedEx at one or the other and just hope it gets there on time and then you would deliver the wet paperwork, pray that it was all done correctly. And then you would move on,

move on with the process. They would get their loan. They would do, you know, the normal, once you're under contract, it was pretty much a normal process. From that point forward, most of the homes were sold as is, a good many of them more. So you really, inspection was really just more for the buyers, for the buyer's information and whether they can tolerate the condition of the home and what they were going to have to do to it to,

to get it reconditioned. So that was pretty much the process back then. I have not, just truthfully, I've not done one in a while. Just it is a very cumbersome. Back then it was a cumbersome process. And I've done it a few times since then. It seems to still be a cumbersome process. The last couple of times I've done it.

So, you know, that that could be definitely something that may be coming back. Yeah, well, the more, you know, the thing I was kind of interested in, that was sort of touching on is you had to negotiate for a buyer agent commission in those in those transactions right i did have to yeah you definitely they can like it was the overall the overall net for the for the hood so that included you could yeah even though they were giving so in a hundred thousand dollar house you know they were going to give you a five you could get as much as a five thousand dollar commission but you can also mess with that to try to improve the bottom line for your buyer.

Right. And try to, and hopefully get them, hopefully get them the deal. So this is a really interesting, you know, I did a, this video probably, or this podcast probably got in another month or so. So you'll have to look back to somewhere around, I think, so it's March 25th. And just, I think about eight days ago, I did a video on Instagram and then I posted some stuff. But what's your take on this phrase? Consumers are more service sensitive than commission sensitive.

Where do you sit in that? Do you agree with that based on just even your experience with HUD homes where you were negotiating on behalf of buyers? So commission sensitive versus service sensitive. So I believe that the people that we're working with, if you do a great job, they value the service. and they see the value that you bring to the table. They see they see the value that you that you're bringing to the table.

And so, yeah, that is something, something that they do. And I want to apologize for just a half a second. My kid just told me there's a hard lockdown at his school and he's like trying to. So I think consumers are very service sensitive. You know, if you don't return a phone call, if you don't return a text, if you don't, you know, because I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, we are. we're in the business of serving somebody and being for, you know, if you're in a transaction with something for 30, 45 days, maybe 60 days, you know, you're living with that person, basically.

I mean, you're texting 20, 30, 40 times a day. You've got stuff. You've got email. It's flying. You've got all these things happening. And it's my job as a professional to manage that transaction to provide them the best service. Glenn, you should, if I'm selling your house, you shouldn't feel like you're having any work to do other than just the stuff that the normal, I did you to sign this or I did you to do that.

You know, you should feel like that I am doing, that I'm earning what you're paying. You know, what I can make as an icon agent or did I work like what I would get paid as a teacher? You know, not downgranted teachers, but you kind of get what I'm getting at? So, you know, what kind of service did I provide from my clients that they, and I think clients, there are definitely people that will value your service over what the commission is going to be. Because I mean, as the old adage goes, you do get what you pay for. So if you're going to really try to negotiate certain things out or, you know, that may not be your ideal client. And I think as agents, we also have to think about who are ideal clients, who we're going to work with.

Do we want to work with people that value what we offer as a professional, just like, you know, You can't go into a lawyer's office and negotiate their fee. It just doesn't happen. They're a professional. You need them, right? And so the same thing, do we have that same mindset when we're working? Do we consider ourselves a professional in the same way as a lawyer or a doctor or a physical therapist or somebody else? You can't just go in there and just say, I don't want to pay you whatever you're charging.

I'll pay you this and expect them to do the same kind of job. Yeah, for sure. So now, obviously, you're at EXP. I think you've been at a couple, few other real estate brokerages, including, I think, KW. What was it that attracted you to EXP? I guess we're going on about five years ago, six years ago? Yeah, it was about six years. We just started just going into year number six now.

And so it was really, it was interesting. I was actually at a continuing education class and there's an agent there with a discount brokerage. And she kind of was like, what are you paying all those fees for? Like, why are you there? What are you doing over there? I was like, well, you know, I'm doing, I'm selling nine, ten million dollars year in homes. I'm doing well. You know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

And that was in December. And then my cap was going to reset back January 1st. And someone had mentioned EXP back to me. back in September of 17 and I did I was like no I believe red and black I'm gonna be on the ALC again I'm gonna do all this stuff yeah now I'm not interested you know I'm sure it's good for you but yeah not interested then another one of my buddies um who I've got on some vacations with and done some things with he said you're not gonna believe this I'm leaving remax I said really who you leave a remax for and he'd been with them for 30 years and had like a 99

he was like literally only had to pay them 1% he's hardly paying them anything he's been there for so I'm going to go with this EXP thing. And I said, oh, really, I've heard about it. And I said, but you know, I'm not interested. I'm good for you, Pete. Great. You know, I bleed red and black. I'm good.

And he said, can you just watch this video? Just do it for me, man. We're buds. Can you just watch this video? I saw, I watched a video. I was like, okay, this makes sense. Like, I liked what I saw. And then had he just led with Robin Kim Campbell were coming,

and they had been my mentors for like 10 years, and they were coming out of real estate retirement to help with the expe in Atlanta. That probably would have gotten me. I probably would have signed up right there on the spot. They had been my mentors for a long time. Even when I was at KW, I had to go up and talk at those meetings and quote unquote, try to go with the gospel of the Red Book, right? But really, I was getting trained.

I had a lot of training from Robin Kim and Kathy Carter and a lot of other people that were all in my network. work that I was learning from. And so I learned how to do real estate the way they learned how to do real estate, which is not really the way the Red Book taught. So that's really what kind of got me. I really wasn't excited about real estate anymore. So it was getting to be like monotonous, you know, going in and doing this and trying to do it this way.

So, you know, when I saw the EXP model and I saw that some of my mentors were coming over to EXP, I was like, well, you know, success leaves clues. So I'm going to follow the trail, follow what they're doing. They've done a lot better than I've done. So I want to follow what they're doing because they know something I don't know. Good stuff. So now where do you specialize in, I mean, your five-time icon? What's your primary business source?

What's your lead gen? Are you focused more on sellers than buyers or vice versa? What does your business look like? And what's your kind of, if you think about, if you were to have a superpower in your business, what would that be? So my superpower is in that one first. My superpower in business is picking up the phone and texting people back. My clients know that they could get me.

If I'm up, they can get me. I don't have, I mean, good or bad. I don't have one of those messages on my phone. If it's after 6 o'clock, you can't reach me. If it's half through seven o'clock, I return your call the next business day. If I'm up and available, now I still try, I do have, I do protect my family time and I do protect my time, my children and loved ones or whatever. But, you know, if I'm up and I'm going to answer your text, because again, I'm in the service, I'm in the business of providing service. I'm in the business of they obviously have a need.

And if I'm still up at 10 o'clock and they're texting me, I'm going to try to provide that need so that they can have a better night's sleep that night. So that is one thing that I just return phone calls, return text, be timely, and act in integrity and whatever you do. People can tell when you're not authentic. Right. So and that the issue your other question as far is where my business comes from. So I would I want to thank you, Glenn, because out of last year out of 56 transactions, 13, came from. other EXB agents from around the country. So, you know, 13 incoming referrals and several outgoing referrals to that I sent out as well.

So, you know, that's a big part of my business. And then obviously following up with past clients, been doing this for 17 years, have a lot of past clients. Do we get a lot of referral business? I just had a referral to an icon agent in Jacksonville yesterday. One of my best clients, I probably don't like 10 transactions with him. He's, grandma needs to sell their house down there. You know, so, yeah, just that has been one of the best sources in my business is just creating relationships with other EXP agents in addition to my own, to my own past clients.

And I do, I am partnered with realty.com, homes.com, and I use the agent assistant service. A lot of the affiliated services that EXP has provided us discounts on and get good things with. So I do use that for, you know, for incoming leads as well. Now, what are you using for a CRM? I use KV Corps. Okay, awesome. Yeah, which obviously we provide that for, well, it's inside of the technology fee, but obviously it's way less expensive than getting it on your own,

but it does a lot of stuff. One last question. I know we're running up against time here, but, you know, If you could give one piece of advice to EXP agents, based on your experience, what would it be? I would say stay around the campfire. And what I mean by that, when I bring someone, the EXPA, it's like it's going to be like drinking through fire hose for a little bit. Because we have so much that we offer. So many different things you can do.

So a lot, there's a lot to set up between, you know, workplace, I mean workplace and all the things you have to set up. to get to get rolling. So I would say just stay around the campfire and then we have so many hours of training every week. Pick what you want to go to. Be consistent. I'm going to go to training every week, every Monday at 12 o'clock. I'm going to go and I'm going to do whatever that training class is or I'm going to pick, block out one or two times during the week that you can go to some of these trainings because what you don't want to get overwhelmed. You want to be able to use the tools that are being they're being given to you. And then also, you know, again,

to go back to what I said earlier, success leaves clues. When you go to these classes, you're hanging around successful people. You're hanging around people that are, that are doing things at a very high level. So making sure you continue to surround yourself with the right types of people. And it's showing up,

showing up for the things that EXP has to offer because it's a lot that the company offers and picking what, where is your niche going to be, What are the things you're going to work on? Are you going to work on professional development? Or you can work on self-development? Are you going to work on lead gen? You're going to work on pick different things to work on and pick different classes with people who have already done and then actually do what they actually told you to do.

Awesome. Well, Jamie, thanks for jumping on. And if somebody wanted to kind of follow you, connect with you, what's sort of the best place to do that? that. Sure. Well, you can find me on Instagram, Jamie Parker, Realtor. On Instagram, of course, on Facebook, Rocket Agent, on Facebook, cell phone numbers 404-48-37816. If you have anybody for Atlanta, I'd love to be able to show them what icon service looks like. Awesome. Well, great stuff. Thanks, Jamie. And again, thanks, thanks everyone for listening to this episode of the expansion podcast. that. Until next week, we'll chat with Japan. Thanks, everyone. You've been listening to

expansion. Tune in every Tuesday for new episodes. Thanks for being the best part of EXP.