WHAT?! Am I in Bizarro World??

Risky market attracting fewer Realtors
By PAGE IVEY - The Associated Press

"Columbia, Greenville and other inland areas saw small gains year-to-year."

This is a sentence in a rather large article that was in The State Newspaper today. Finally, someone printed that "Columbia...saw small gains year-to-year." It's about time!!! Jeesh. Here we sit in the middle of an opportunity for Columbia to shine, and all I see are headlines of doom and gloom. I am glad to see that (however small the blurb) The State finally printed something good about Columbia's real estate market. It is disturbing that it took an AP reporter to do it. Good for you Page Ivey!

To get to the crux of the article, I can certainly see why some folks are hesitant to become Realtors. Good market or bad, it is a grinding profession. Although I happen to love it, being a Realtor is not for everyone.

There are about 2,300 Realtors in the Greater Columbia Metro area (some call it The Riverbanks Region). A recruiter from another company told me that the Top 200 Realtors (in production) do 50% of all of the business. That leaves the rest to be split up between 2,100 Realtors. Yikes! That's enough to give anyone second thoughts about becoming a Realtor.

Having said that, I encourage anyone to get in "the game." I have said many times, "What if my grandaddy (Leon Jones) had never opened his own agency, because there were too many insurance agents." To heck with that. As long as you "go get yours," you will be fine. Remember that you don't have to be the biggest in town immediately. In sales, you just need to keep getting "yours," and growth will take care of itself. I hope the lady featured in the article can reach her 1st year goal of $50,000.

If you're ready to take a leap, jump on in!