KGCI: Real Estate on Air - PM to Pro: Leveraging Property Management for Real Estate Success

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

Summary:Discover the powerful pathway from property management to unparalleled success in the broader real estate industry. This episode reveals how the unique skills and deep market insights gained in property management provide a distinct advantage for real estate agents, investors, and brokers. Learn to leverage your expertise in tenant relations, financial oversight, legal compliance, and property maintenance to build a thriving, multi-faceted real estate career.Bullet Point TakeawaysDeep Market & Property Knowledge: Property managers develop an intimate understanding of local rental markets, property values, maintenance costs, and tenant demands—all critical insights for successful sales, investments, and development.Mastering Client & Tenant Relations: Experience in handling tenant inquiries, resolving disputes, and ensuring tenant satisfaction hones crucial interpersonal and communication skills, vital for building rapport with buyers, sellers, and investors.Financial Acumen & Risk Mitigation: Property managers gain expertise in rent collection, budgeting, financial reporting, and navigating legal compliance, which directly translates into savvy financial analysis and effective risk management for real estate transactions and investments.Operational Efficiency & Problem-Solving: The day-to-day demands of property oversight, including coordinating maintenance, managing vendors, and ensuring property upkeep, build strong operational efficiency and resourcefulness—skills invaluable in complex real estate deals.Diverse Career Paths & Income Streams: Explore how a property management background opens doors to various real estate careers, including sales agent, leasing consultant, appraiser, and even directly into investment, offering multiple income streams and long-term growth potential.Topics:Property Management to Real EstateReal Estate Career TransitionProperty Manager SkillsReal Estate Success PathLeveraging PM ExperienceCall-to-Action:Ready to transform your property management experience into broader real estate success? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and chart your new career path!

Hey, everybody. It's Kathy Burns, and I'm here with Christine Leister. She says Lister would be a good way, especially in the real estate business. And I love that idea. You're welcome. Hi, thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm very excited. You know, you've got a unique story, and that's really what I'm trying to bring here. The whole purpose of this is to help agents really learn from each other because the industry wasn't designed that way, and it's been a culture of keeping your secrets held tight. And it's, that's what you're really of scarcity mentality. I don't like that mentality. I really like it when we all collaborate together and empower each other. And by sharing stories like Christine, it's an important piece because you may register with that. And I think you might too because she's got some good

stuff here. So Christine, you want to kind of give us a little background how you got into real estate, your journey and kind of give everybody a feel. Yeah, sure. So I got into real estate really early. The full backstory, I graduated high school at 17. So I was working at a credit union at the time through a work program through my high school. And the day I graduated was the day I lost my job because you had to be 18 to work at the credit union. So it was freshly out of high school, had no job. And I just started going around to local businesses in town dropping off resumes. And I came across a global banker in town and they took my resume. and I got a call, did a board interview, ended up getting brought on as a part-time assistant

to a top producer, a part-time property manager assistant. And at that time, I was unlicensed. So the property manager ended up getting pregnant with her husband. They, when she went off on maternity leave, the broker approached me asking me, hey, would you get into property management full time? And so I said, yes, got my license at that point. and I was in property management for five years with 425 doors under my belt. Wow.

Top producing agents over there too. That's amazing. You know, and I learned a lot of things from what you just said. First of all, you didn't have a job. So you figured out, well, I'm going to go walk the streets. I'm going to figure this out. You weren't a quitter. And I really love that about you.

And then you evolved to where you got your license, 400, some, 425 doors, did you say? Yeah. And at the time it was me and the lead property manager. So there were two of us. And then the gal that took off from maternity leave came back. So eventually there were three of us managing 425 hours. Wow. And you did not have the same technology that we do today. I'm sure. No. Back in the day they would, you know, you'd go get a rental list and it'd be on an Excel sheet. There was no website. Like there was a app. There was, you came in to each property management company got a list and then, you know, would drive around town and say, oh, we like this one. We want to go look at it.

Wow. That's amazing. So you got a lot of grit, girl. I really like that. Thank you. Yeah. Then you decided, tell us the story. You mentioned it to me a little earlier about how you actually got where you were selling real estate

and kind of shifting away. Sure. So when I was in property management, me and my husband got pregnant with my daughter. and I wanted to take off the first year with her. We had made a bet. He said if you take six months of savings, then you can quit. So I did. And so the first year, my daughter was born in 2015, I was home with her.

And when I returned to the workforce, I actually went back to work for a Navy base, a government job. And I kept my license active the whole time. Was working on base for a few years. And one of my co-workers' sisters had heard that I had my license. And so she had wanted to sell her house. She asked me, you know, hey, would you sell my house? And I didn't want to.

I was like, no, you know, I don't want to pay the dues. I'm not, I'm not really quite sure I want to get into sales. Because at that point, I had only done property management. I didn't have any, you know, sales experience. So she kind of broke me down. And finally, I was like, okay, fine. So I paid my dues. I bought the sign, got the lockbox, did all the things.

Ended up selling two of her houses for her and still work. on base full time. Once that was over, I never advertised. I never told anybody. It was all word of mouth, friends, family, things like that. And my business just kind of slowly, you know, would get bigger. I'd have people tell me like, hey, I hear you're back in real estate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was working full time at the time. And I got to the point where I was working 18 plus hour days. And I just was so stressed out that at age 27, I broke out with shingles on my face. from stress. Yeah.

And I just wasn't ready to let go yet. Yeah. And, you know, I remember going to the optometrist and he looked me dead of my eyes. I was like, what are you doing? You're going to kill yourself before you're 30. And why? You know, and I'm like, I don't know. But I was really scared to quit.

So came home, had the conversation with my husband, you know, hey, I think I'm going to quit my job. He asked which one. Oh, we have a guest appearance here. Sorry about that. Asked which one I said the government and he said, Okay. So I ended up quitting my job after about a two-month process of kind of really weighing my options in October of 2020. And I've been doing it full time ever since.

Which is an interesting date, October 2020. We're full on COVID right then. And that was a challenging, you know, people didn't know, are we ever going to get out of COVID? Are we ever going to be not on lockdown? In our area, we were being non-essential in some counties and essential in others. So it was tricky to do business. How was it for you there? So it was the same. I mean, being in California, you know, we had some pretty strict restrictions. I remember one point we had these forms that we would have to fill out when we'd go show property to the buyers and then, um,

allowing us to give permission to go into the house. I mean, it was a whole thing, but it was crazy to think. I mean, I had a government job. I was DOD with, you know, 401K, you know, the daycare benefits. I had all that. And it just was something that I knew I needed to do. So that's why I jumped. You really reproved yourself when you took on that property management job to the level that

you did, I'm. mean, you've told me that you get the majority of your leads to referrals and stuff. What they, and you're from a small town, right? Yeah, there's 30,000 of us here. So, yeah. So you're a small town. You're probably well known, especially if you were doing property management like that. You're out and about.

Social media wasn't to the level that it is today. And yet you build a reputation. I'm sure of integrity. Yeah, I feel it. of integrity, someone that they could count on. You worked so hard that you made yourself sick. So people knew your style. And that was smart that you made a decision for you.

It was a gift to you and your family and your daughter. And I think that that's why people trust you and pick up on it and want to do business with you, don't you think? Yeah. And I think the thing is, is I don't, with agents that come into my office that are maybe new to the industry, they I don't share that story quite enough I think because you know when I came into sales full time at 2020 looking back it was like I was a you know overnight success like I just went from you know starting into the real estate and then now I'm up here with the high producers but the reality of it was because I had a lot of influence behind me um being in the industry alone that was kind

more behind the scenes because I never really had any intention on getting into sales. Even when I was in property management, I would see the agents stressed out, walking around like crazy, you know, and again, we talked about before a little about about culture and the culture that I was in at that brokerage, it wasn't pretty. So it didn't, it didn't show me like, why would I want to go do that? Like, they hate each other. That sounds crazy. So I never intended on it. It's just, you know, those little things kind of carried with me through it. But sure, definitely. So do you have your own firm now or where are you at now?

So I'm with Keller Williams here in town. So we are a satellite office to the broker. They actually sit in the Antelope Valley, which is about an hour and a half away from us. So I think there's 450 agents total, but there's only 13 that sit in my little office. Gotcha. Yeah, I'm familiar with the satellite offices. I was only at Keller for about eight months before I joined a team when I got to Keller. And two weeks after I joined the team, they said, we're going to EXP.

I'd never even heard of it. I'm like, whatever. At that point in my life, there was so much turmoil going on. I'm like, it's going at that point. I built a nice business for myself. My business partner decided to go another pass. So I was regrouping with what's it like to be a single agent again? with and I had an assistant as well, but I also all of a sudden got my mother who had dementia

and I needed to take care of her. And it was a lot happening at one time. And I thought, let me get on a team because I'd had my own team. We dispersed and it was a lot, you know, and there isn't necessarily support. I didn't have a husband. It was just me trying to do this. And I was kind of going backwards in my business, built up a nice, nice business that we were very successful at. And then when my partner went another direction, it was, you know, regrouping. Not that I can't do it because I can reinvent myself pretty easy. But at that initial switch, it's challenging, isn't it? You know what I'm talking about.

Yeah, I used to tell the agents that were in the sales business for years, like in, pardon my French, but I would say, I feel like I'm just throwing shit at the wall to see if it sticks. Yeah. You know, they would joke just keep throwing it because it's working, you know, but yeah. There was no, you know, when I went into sales, it was just you figure it out what works for you, what works for your personality, what works for, you know, your customer, things like that. I mean, I feel like that's probably something that is kind of a gap in our industry in

general is that these agents that come on, maybe they tell you the world is yours. and there's no ceiling, which I agree, but there's also a floor. And at some point, you're going to maybe start at the floor. And it's like you just don't know where to start or even sometimes how to start. Where do you start? And I think that's a big part of it, you know, trying to figure out what works. I do, too. I do think the industry is changing.

I do think that there is a newer culture coming alive. I think there are companies out there that are really feeling the importance of mentorship in the beginning and collaboration. That's the goal of this video is really about collaborating and so that people can pick up nuggets like, well, I feel better. I feel more secure because I'm in her spot. I feel like, I can do this. And I think what we need to do is dig deep, like when we're like doing a change. We've got to dig deep. Have I experienced change before? if I gotten through this, yeah, I have. I know I have. I've reinvented myself so many friggin' times. And when you have those different sucker punches like getting out of high school and you lost your

job, which is the sucker punch for you, right? You didn't let it stop you, even though you were scared. As you said, you were shaking in your pants with they were wide pants or something and nobody could see. And the truth was you persevered despite it. And I think things like this where people will come into play and they can say, I can relate to her. And I want to reach out to her. I'd love to get some insight from Christine or from Kathy and see how we can, you know, level up our business.

I'm with the XP. Our company does have mentoring. We do have all kinds of state-of-the-art training. And it's a metaverse company. So it's all online. And I'm not saying you need to come to either company. I'm saying, do your homework people. because there are opportunities and there are certainly agents.

I feel like you would be a share. I'll bet in your office you'd share. Yeah, I mean, I always tell people I don't have the secret ingredient. There's no secret ingredient. It's just, you know, it's if you, what you put into is what you get out of it. I always hate online when they're like, oh, I made $300,000 and only worked four hours a day. Like, follow me for more. And it's like, did you?

Right. Because I know I work a hell of a lot more than three hours a day. I mean, my days are long, but I, you know, make sure that that's where I want to be. You don't have to be there. And I think that was something for me, too, that I really had to look inward on and kind of settle with that. Because, again, they always teach you like, oh, there's more, there's more. There's more. And then I remember I do have a business coach.

I meet with him every week. And I remember talking to my coach, like, okay, hear me out. what if I'm good? Like, what if my production level, I'm good? The income's good. Like, what if I, and he was like, yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. And I was like, oh, like, I was anticipating him to be like, no, you have more. You can do more.

Like, and, you know, maybe another coach would. But it was kind of like, you know, you have to sit down and realize, like, maybe you don't want to be running around like a chicken with your head cut off and doing open house Saturdays and all the things that make take to be where you're at, but know that you can still make your job, your dream, your passion, your whatever it is, freedom, whatever your goal is. You just have to be clear about what that is. Right. You know, I used to beat myself up about it. Boy, I'm not as good as that one or I'm not as good as that one. But I'm very content where I am and the level where I'm at is good. Right. Like you're saying, good. I'm older too. At this stage,

the game. I don't want to be working those 14, 18 hour days anymore. I want to have fun. I want to travel. I want to and I want to empower other agents. That charges me. So let me teach. Let me help them, level them up. And that empowers me. And I make a good living in my real estate. Right. I can do this. And I'm looking to work with those agents. I'm looking for the ones that are looking for me that said, could you help me a level up? I'd love it. I'd love to level up. And that's really what I'm doing this for. And I also have another, I have another YouTube channel that's called Tech Savvy Realty Solutions. And there's a, there's a lot of agents. You're younger, so you probably are involved much more with the tech. There's a lot of good

talented realtors that they are just not there with the tech. And this wave of AI technology that's happening, better, or you will be, you will drown because too many agents are. are taking it up. And I've always loved tech. So for me, this is a no-brainer. I'm just diving in. And that's the other thing I want to do. I want to teach them the tech.

Not all of the tech, but teach them the tech that'll work for them. So it'll make their business easier, more efficient. And I'm teaching 18 people tomorrow in Portugal AI. And they're not utilizing it in their business. And it's a luxury real estate firm. And I'm like, guys, let me just show you some tricks. Well, and I think the thing with technology, too, you know, similar to your customer base. If it's something you enjoy doing, it's not as hard to learn how to do it.

Right. So my assistant and I, we always like, if we have a TikTok, we have Instagram, we have Facebook. And I mean, we have a lot of fun with it. But it's not like my go to like, oh, I'm going to try and capture all. I mean, maybe I'm utilizing it wrong. But for me, the job is very mentally straining. So I enjoy the creativity aspect of the TikTok. So for me, it lets my creativity brain kind of go.

And so then it makes it more fun and I'm going to do it every day instead of, you know, but like if you're not, you know, I always see the get ready with me. They do their makeup. If you're not into makeup, then don't do a get ready with me. You know, if you drink coffee and you're telling them about how, you know, you're making a smoothie, don't video the smoothie make video you making a coffee and then put it on your ticot or whatever it is like i think that's a big part of it is finding out what you enjoy doing and then just using that because then it doesn't feel so like oh like i don't want to stare at a computer screen and put makeup on whatever it is

right right for me i don't like dancing right my assistant's always like oh you need to do the one with the dance and i'm like no no i don't want to do that and we haven't yet I mean, I'm not saying you won't see it on our social media, but you haven't yet because it's like, oh, it makes me like, I don't want to do that. Yeah. I'm never going to do that myself. No. I just got off interviewing another gal. Her name is Caitlin Murphy.

She's 27 or 28. She's an investor. She's a coach. She's a flipper. She's, and her whole social media is Instagram. Yeah. And she has done over $30 million on. by capturing people through Instagram using a tool.

It's an AI tool called Mini-Chat. And what she was teaching was how to be efficient and actually capture your social media. Because a lot of people are putting posts on there, but they're not getting anything. Right. And she captures it. She and we're on a panel together at the end of the month where she's going to talk all about how she captures it. and I'm going to be doing it on how to create an AI on different communities so that you'll know all the details about specific communities.

And that's always like a go-to piece for you that you can then go in to AI and say, tell me what's going on in the community now because of how you've set it all up in there. And my daughter's on the panel as well. And she's going to be teaching all about how you prompt it. So people will really learn how to utilize AI in understanding. understandable process with handouts that they can take home. And again, when you give like that, you know, people are drawn to whichever one of those personalities are on that panel or like with you and me, they're going to want to reach out and say, hey, could I learn from you? I get you.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And for me, I mean, I always tell people there's enough to go around. There is. There just is. You know, you don't have to be cut throw and stab back. backstabbing. I always joke like I didn't have drama in high school. I'm not going to have drama as an adult. I love that. You know, I just thought it's not me. So there's enough to go around. My license plate says empower. And I just, that's my thought process. I want everybody to be lifted up and lift me up too. I don't have any, any time for the drama and the nonsense that goes on in the world, much less in real estate. So. Amen. Amen. What was I going to ask you? I know you mentioned that you had a lot of success with mailings.

Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So we, well, for our production, we're kind of 50-50 on the listing side of the house and on the buyer's side of the house. So I think last year we had 26 listings, 28 buyers, a year before we did 36 listings, 32 buyers. So we're pretty even, Steven. So when I'm doing our mailing, it's more targeted towards the listing side of the

house and then when we're doing like our social media and things it tends to be more towards buyers but one of the things that we did um were again with keller williams we had taken a class with monica reynolds and monica reynolds is a top producer in the san diego area i believe she runs a high volume team down there and um she like you're saying she you take the class and she tells you everything like nothing is off limits you can ask questions you can take her binders her handouts her email templates I mean, you name it, she gives it. And we took that and we modified it a little bit to more fit more our customer base and our community and stuff like that.

So we do two different types. We do one to generate the lead. We do what people know as a golden letter. And we send out a letter to a farm area. And we're very specific about who we're sending our letters to. We target more of the people because, again, we're in California. So a lot of people are going to retire from California and move to Florida or Texas or something they're going to be leaving because of the taxes and things like that for retirement. So we are very specific.

We look at people that are 65 and older and have bought in the last, you know, from 2017 on somebody who's getting ready to prepare for retirement and get ready to leave. And we get calls all the time on our letters because it's pretty generic. It's not very, it's, it is customized. It says, you know, hello, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. my name is Christine you know we have a I have a qualified buyer that's looking for these requirements you know one two three four five if your house fits this call us we're they're ready to make a competitive offer pretty much the gist of it and we get calls you know hey I got your letter in the mail what are you thinking oh great thank you for letting you know calling us on

the letter is there a time that I could come out and help do a market analysis for you and then that's where we capture the lead and then of course if they're not ready to sell we do the follow-up, things like that. Once we actually have a listing, so moving forward, we do a three-part listing or excuse me, a letter step, if you will. So we take the listing. We have our sellers fill out a little fun sheet about their house. What do they love about it? Is it the neighborhood, the open kitchen, the backyard, whatever it is? And we write the letter for the seller. So it says, you know, hello neighbor we've lived in this house since ex-state and as you can see there's a sign in the front we've chosen christine to sell our house wouldn't it be great to find a neighbor or someone you know

that would be interested in living in this neighborhood here's a few things we love about the house if you mention this letter to our realtor or to your realtor about this house will make you a discount right then we send that out to the surrounding neighbors so once we get the listing we send the letter to the neighbors and we love this uh yeah we do the letter so we do the letter so it looks like they wrote it. Of course, we send it to the sellers to say, hey, proof read it. Let us know that this is right. They say yes. And then we do the labeling. We do the stamps. And then we do the return address as their address. So like when the neighbor gets it, it says Mr. and Mrs. Smith at the top, not Christine Leicester. Interesting. We get a lot of calls from that

too. And then once we get it into contract, we ask our sellers, you know, hey, can we send out another letter on your behalf to let the neighbors know a little bit about your new neighbor. Sure. So then we send a little neighbor. Oh, you know, it's in contract. Thank you for the neighbors that sent us leads. And it's in escrow. We'll let you know when the family closes. And then the last letter that we send is, again, with permission from our seller to say pretty much, hey, the house is sold. We're going to you. Reach out to Christine. She helped us. She's great. Thank you. Wow. So I love that. So her name was Monica Edwards. Monica Reynolds. Yeah. Yeah. She, we got that from her and we do it with every listing. And I mean, it's a lot of labor. Um, because again, you're handwriting a lot of envelopes, but worth it. Um,

I actually just met a client two weeks ago. They called their parents called my sign to go look at a house. And anyway, I'm in the house with them. And she says, I, I have your business card on my fridge. And I said, really? She said, yeah, you sold my neighbor's house on Purdue. And I got a letter in the mail from them saying, you sold their house. And so I have you on my fridge. And I said, if I ever were to sell, I would give you a call. I'm like, great, here I am. She wasn't ready to sell, but she kept my stuff, you know. Yeah, I love that. So when you first mailed out that very targeted thing, what was the tool that you used to figure out who was that target market? So our title rep company gives us their title. I don't even know what it's called. It's called Title Pro 1 247, I think. So our title rep gives us access to it and we can pull. And of course, we're very diligent about making sure that they're not on the do not mail list.

And then, of course, we don't call. Like I don't do cold calling, but we do make sure and we keep that part private. You know, if they're not on it, we exclude them. So we don't send a There's a tool called PropStream where you can pull that exact data and you can filter it and pull it out but you pay for it where I like yours is free better.

But that was great. Thank you so much, Christine, for sharing that because that's a nugget right here that somebody is going to benefit from for sure. Hustlers are going to benefit from it because that was a lot of work and yet clearly rewardable, right? Oh yeah.

And I think one of the things about it too is staying consistent. And, you know, another thing in this world of sales, if you will, you always hear a lot of people saying, oh, don't do postcards. Oh, don't send letters. Like, nobody opens their mail anymore. We don't experience that. We actually get a really good return on it. And I've also had neighbors, like, write me a letter back. Like, so I guess maybe know your market and see if it's worth it. For us, it's worth it. For us, it's worth. it. I think that there's something tangible about a piece of paper from your neighbor that that's not something that's common anymore. Right. You know, you may not know your neighbor.

And written too, didn't you? So we don't handwrite the letter itself, but we do handwrite the return address. Okay. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's personal enough to open it up. Right. And now you're talking about my neighbor, my neighborhood. Is it branded in any way? What's the letter look like. So it's no for the most part. Well, so the letter to the neighbors is supposed to look like it's from the cellar, right? So it's very plain Jane, nothing, no pizzazz, no nothing. The letter that we do to farm for what we do call again, the golden letter, that has a little bit more eye catchy, you know, design and like, hey, you know, give us a call kind of deal. And then when we do the letter to the neighbors, the first letter with our scenes, we don't include a business card with the second and third letter to the neighbors we do.

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, that was great. Boy, I really appreciated this, Christine. Awesome. You're great. And I loved having you on. I appreciate it so much. And we're going to have all your contact information here.

People want to get in touch with you and see if they can connect with you, especially in your area. And we'll be sending you a copy of the video, of course. Appreciate it so much. And I wish you the best day. Yeah, thank you. And then you guys can always follow me on Instagram. My handle is your hometown realtor or on Facebook. It's christine.lyster.kw. Always available. I do work again next to a Navy base. So if you have any military clients, we do deal with a lot of VA buyers that are transferring to and from China Lake. So I'm looking for referral partners as much as you are for me. So let us know

we're here to help. Oh, that's awesome. Thanks again. I appreciate it.