My Real Estate Career Path. 01.

I stumbled into real estate by chance. I was 26 years old, studying fashion design at Lasalle College, a single mother with two young children at home, and in need of a part-time job.

I saw an ad online for a condominium hostess position in Ville-Émard, where I was living at the time. I had experience in administration, and it seemed like fun.

So I sent my resume and got an interview. It went so well that the real estate agent not only hired me on the spot, but left me in the model condo with a stack of specs and a few keys so I could get to work right away.

Me, around that time

I learned a lot about myself, my values, and what I wanted from my career during this first experience in the industry. I worked for this broker on and off for three or four years, selling condos from furnished models or directly from plans in a trailer. I loved interacting with potential buyers and found that they appreciated my honesty. I convinced many people that condos were NOT right for them, but I was still responsible for at least 75% of the sales in every project I worked on. I knew instinctively that every property has its buyer and every buyer has their property, and that it's normal to let people walk away from something that's not right for them.

My employer treated me as well as she could, but she was very unstable. What's more, she always tried to convince me not to become a broker myself, claiming that it would be too difficult with young children at home. My other problem was the poor quality of the products I was selling. The staged dishes would rattle when the resident upstairs walked from one room to another, above. I had to tell people that the soundproofing was perfect when it wasn't, and one day, a skylight simply crashed to the floor of a fortunately unoccupied apartment.

My children went to school in Westmount, and as I walked with them through those streets on the way home from the YMCA daycare, I realized that there were better real estate opportunities out there and that I could learn a lot more from the most successful and sophisticated brokers. I made a phone call that would change the course of my professional life in ways I could never have imagined. But that will be the subject of part two—see you soon!