Is Real Estate a Good Career? a Laid Off, Houston Anchor Closed $28 Million As a New Realtor

• Lily Jang grew to become a authentic-estate agent in 2017 following performing typically as a broadcast-news anchor.
• She obtained into authentic estate for the reason that she’d experienced lousy ordeals with brokers and preferred adaptable several hours.
• To stand out to her customers, she presents social-media promotion, household staging, and Tv set placement.

In advance of she was a effective genuine-estate agent closing on just about $28 million in discounts in 2022, Lily Jang was a news anchor for KHOU-Television set in Houston.

She never would’ve still left the broadcasting world, she explained to Insider, had the Television set station not gone through a management improve and subsequent layoffs.

“You generally know in the back of your head this could come about: New management arrives in, and they’re going to thoroughly clean house, and you could be a casualty — and that is exactly what took place to me,” she stated.

The blow was primarily difficult for her since a person of the key factors she moved to Houston was to choose treatment of her growing old moms and dads, particularly her father, who has Parkinson’s sickness. Contrary to other broadcasters who could select up and move to one more metropolis for a career, Jang wanted to continue to be and get treatment of her family members.

“That was the most devastating time in my everyday living. Anybody else would’ve springboarded to Chicago, New York, LA, or Miami, but I couldn’t,” Jang, who experienced labored in other states in advance of shifting to Texas, stated. “I sat in a corner and cried for two months, but I claimed to myself, ‘I’m going to have to pivot. I have to determine this out.'”

And determine it out she did — by the conclusion of her to start with 12 months at Keller Williams, she’d closed $8 million in serious-estate transactions and surpassed her income as a news anchor. In 2021, four several years soon after she received her begin, she made approximately $900,000 in gross earnings.

“I took my job as a information anchor, my advertising and marketing techniques, and leveraged anything I experienced and who I was, and I applied that in genuine estate,” Jang reported. “I created my journalism career on relationships, communication, and integrity, and I parlayed all that into my new vocation pretty seamlessly.”

Here is how she crafted a enterprise that’s thrived by social media and organic and natural advertising.

Earning the pivot

Jang’s fascination in true estate was spurred by her activities searching for homes.

“I experienced bought and bought residences in the previous, and I understood how very little my Realtor did for me,” Jang claimed. “I was like, ‘I can do this improved than you, and you’re not even advocating for me.'”

A different benefit, she extra, was the possibility to be her have boss and established her personal work several hours.

In 2017, immediately after paying out roughly a month accomplishing a six-portion on-line system with the Champions Faculty of Authentic Estate, Jang declared her career change on Facebook and immediately began receiving messages from outdated high-university mates and colleagues inquiring irrespective of whether she would choose on their listings. 3 months later, she had 3 houses in her portfolio — two of which ended up luxury properties priced at additional than $750,000.

Jang worked 80-hour months for the to start with six months.

“I bear in mind crying at the conclusion of some months from pure exhaustion,” she stated. “I realized that my company was entirely dependent on me acquiring a way to sector myself differently and on a greater system when there ended up tens of hundreds of other Realtors out there.”

Nowadays, Jang has discovered a better perform-lifetime harmony and has outsourced numerous features of her company, which include selecting a transaction coordinator to handle paperwork and a comprehensive-time certified assistant to assist in a variety of tasks.

Making use of social media and Tv to entice shoppers

Jang mentioned her exclusive strategy to offering assisted her establish a company entirely from referrals and organic queries from sellers, prospective buyers, buyers, renters, and fellow real-estate agents. For her shoppers, Jang supplies videos, residence staging, and Instagram exposure on her account, which has 35,000 followers.

“I have hardly ever created a one cold phone, and I’ve hardly ever knocked on any doors. My business is 70{d4d1dfc03659490934346f23c59135b993ced5bc8cc26281e129c43fe68630c9} referral from working day 1 and 30{d4d1dfc03659490934346f23c59135b993ced5bc8cc26281e129c43fe68630c9} social media,” she said. “My Tv set history gave me an organic and natural system of men and women who felt they realized me, trustworthy me, and required to operate with me.”

On social media, Jang walks by way of several of the wonderful, glossy features of a household but also points to instructional information that possible customers would want to pay focus to, like ceilings that have experienced former repair service get the job done, wall corners that give clues to the issue of a home’s basis, and other issues that indicate the structural integrity of a home.

Jang also shares on social media what she does off the clock, like her overseas travel and great eating. She reported this is underrated among real-estate agents, primarily when they want to do the job with luxurious clients, lots of of whom probable want enter on great eating places and journey locations.

“It reveals men and women all the levels of who I am, how I journey, what my hobbies are, and what authentic estate seems to be like in other areas of the globe,” she claimed. “People function with persons they like and sense most linked to.”

Jang has also been equipped to use her broadcasting background to her advantage, initially with a nearby phase identified as “Lily’s Listing” on KPRC, then, immediately after that was canceled since of Hurricane Harvey, a 30-moment genuine-estate demonstrate named “Property 2 Household with Lily Jang,” where by she functions house listings as very well as interviews with loan providers, builders, inside designers, and other true-estate gurus.

Jang’s connections and knowledge in the broadcasting planet served her url up with Jerry Martin, the now retired common supervisor of KPRC. He brainstormed several authentic-estate-display strategies with Jang in advance of landing on the principle for “Lily’s Checklist” following Jang showed him a video clip sample of what she had in mind.

“I believe I closed a few transactions in the limited six months we had been on the air,” she stated. “‘Lily’s List’ was just as important as social media for me in reaching prospective consumers.”

Promoting properties in the recent marketplace

When fluctuating fascination fees and slowing demand may make other true-estate brokers anxious, Jang is not much too worried about the alter of rate. She mentioned that even though stock is lower, she’s continue to looking at numerous offers on properties with essential features, these types of as great neighborhoods and the ideal value place. Jang’s tips to those purchasing in Houston is to often order a house zoned to dependable, effectively-rated faculties.

As for her confidence in how she’ll accomplish in a tighter, a lot more-aggressive marketplace, Jang mentioned she’s happy to flip a page on the wildness that 2021 and early 2022 introduced. She stated there was an inflow of “tens of hundreds of new” serious-estate brokers who benefited from historically lower curiosity fees, which created true-estate transactions more rapidly, simpler, and additional lucrative, but now periods are a lot harder.

“When the sector shifts like this and normalizes, there is certainly a systemic exodus of brokers for the reason that not all agents are making product sales they are employed to in get to make a living,” she reported. “The Realtors who benefited from a sturdy industry are now not making as much.

“They have dues to pay out without closings, so our industry has normalized and new brokers who received into the video game through the surge of document residence gross sales failed to automatically have to have resourceful advertising and marketing abilities, business enterprise setting up, and putting in the do the job and hustle to make profits, and quite a few have to switch to a salaried job with a lot more protection.”

Jang stated she believes the authentic-estate brokers who will thrive are the ones totally invested and integrated in the industry, as opposed to all those with no a “pulse on the marketplace each and every single day.”