The Katelayna Insider
The Part of Real Estate Nobody Talks About
People like to joke that real estate is an easy job. Show a few houses, put a sign in a yard, write some paperwork and collect a commission. There are days I wish it were that simple. Today I found out that a longtime client of mine is nearing the end of his life, and suddenly all the things that normally seem important in this business don't seem very important at all.
I'm intentionally leaving out the details because his story and what his family is going through aren't mine to tell. What I can talk about is what happens when someone you've worked with through multiple transactions isn't really just a client anymore. Real estate has a strange way of bringing people into your life. You meet because someone wants to buy or sell a house, but then you spend hours together. You walk through houses, stand in driveways talking after showings, work through problems and have conversations that have absolutely nothing to do with real estate.
Over time, you learn about families, work, plans, frustrations and all the ordinary pieces of someone's life. They learn those things about you too. Somewhere along the way, without really noticing when it happened, the relationship becomes something more than agent and client. I would consider this client a friend, and today I'm trying to process the fact that my friend is dying.
There is still real estate tangled up in all of this because life doesn't conveniently wait until everything is settled before something terrible happens. There are properties and questions and things his loved ones will eventually have to figure out. A short time ago those things were important. Now they feel almost irrelevant compared with what his family is facing.
That's also where my role has changed. I'm no longer focused on helping someone sell a home. I'm trying to help people I care about navigate a situation none of us expected them to be in. That doesn't mean pretending I have answers I don't have. There are questions that belong with attorneys and other professionals, and knowing where my role ends is important. Sometimes helping means explaining what I can, finding the right person for what I can't, and taking one small thing off someone's plate when they already have far too much to carry.
Nobody really talks about this part of real estate. We talk about negotiations, contracts, marketing, closings and commissions. We don't talk much about what happens after you've spent years building relationships with people and something happens to one of them. There isn't a class that teaches you how to separate the professional relationship from the friendship when, somewhere along the way, the line between the two disappeared.
I suppose I could make this job easier on myself by keeping people at arm's length. I could treat every transaction as exactly that, do the job well, close the file and move on to the next one. Days like today would probably hurt a lot less. But I also think I would lose one of the things I have always valued most about this career.
People may come into my life because of real estate, but that doesn't mean that's where the relationship has to end. Some become people I genuinely care about. Some become friends. Most of the time, that is one of the greatest parts of this job.
Today, it's one of the hardest.
