The Katelayna Insider

A Person Is Not a Transaction

Today, while I was out doing the normal errands that fill up a day, my business phone rang. It was a woman who had found me through a website she clicked on and decided to call. I answered the way I normally do and simply asked, “How can I help?” I had no idea that question would lead to a conversation lasting well over an hour.

We talked a little about real estate, but mostly, we talked about her life. I learned about her family, her home, and the life she had built there. I learned some of the history held inside that house and why it mattered to her. I also learned that she has cancer, and she knows it will likely end her life. What started as a phone call about a property became something very different pretty quickly.

Her house is now in serious disarray after what she described as a roofing job gone terribly wrong. The resulting damage is extensive enough that the home may ultimately be a teardown. As if dealing with her health and watching her home deteriorate weren't enough, she told me that she has also had her identity stolen. One problem had piled onto another until she was left trying to figure out what to do with a house in the middle of everything else happening in her life.

I spent well over an hour on the phone with her. Not because this is going to be a huge listing. It won't be. Depending on what the property is worth and how much time it takes to figure out the best path forward, I may spend more helping her than I will ever make from the sale. And I am completely okay with that.

Real estate has become an industry obsessed with numbers. We talk about volume, units, average sale price, commissions, conversion rates and production. There is nothing inherently wrong with running a business or making a living; that's what businesses have to do. But somewhere in all of those numbers, it can become incredibly easy to forget that the person on the other end of the phone isn't a lead, a conversion or a potential commission check. They're a person.

Sometimes someone calls a real estate agent because they need to sell a house. Other times, the house is simply one more problem sitting in the middle of a life that has become incredibly complicated. In those moments, our job isn't to figure out how quickly we can turn the conversation into a transaction. Sometimes our job is to listen long enough to understand what the person actually needs.

I don't know yet exactly what I will be able to do for her. Maybe I can help sell the property. Maybe I can connect her with people who can help with pieces of the situation that are outside of what I do. Maybe we find an option that costs her less, even if that means there isn't much of a commission at the end of it for me. Whatever the answer is, I want to help her find the path that makes the most sense for her, not the one that makes the most money for me.

She called looking for help with a house, but I think what she needed today was someone willing to hear the whole story before deciding what the house was worth or what she was worth as a client. She needed someone to listen, so I listened.

Because at the end of the day, real estate is how I make a living, but people are the reason I chose to do it differently. Not every conversation needs to become a transaction, and not every person who calls needs to represent a paycheck before they're worth our time.



A person is not a transaction. And sometimes the most important thing we can do has absolutely nothing to do with the check.