- Lily Jang became a real-estate agent in 2017 after doing the job largely as a broadcast-information anchor.
- She acquired into actual estate because she’d had terrible activities with brokers and preferred flexible hours.
- To stand out to her purchasers, she gives social-media advertising, residence staging, and Television set placement.
Before she was a effective authentic-estate agent closing on practically $28 million in deals in 2022, Lily Jang was a news anchor for KHOU-Television in Houston.
She in no way would’ve remaining the broadcasting world, she informed Insider, experienced the Television station not absent via a management change and subsequent layoffs.
“You usually know in the back of your head this could materialize: New administration will come in, and they are going to clear residence, and you could be a casualty — and that is exactly what transpired to me,” she reported.
The blow was especially tricky for her mainly because one particular of the key explanations she moved to Houston was to choose treatment of her ageing mothers and fathers, specially her father, who has Parkinson’s disease. Unlike other broadcasters who could pick up and transfer to an additional city for a occupation, Jang essential to keep and take care of her household.
“That was the most devastating time in my life. Anybody else would’ve springboarded to Chicago, New York, LA, or Miami, but I could not,” Jang, who had worked in other states just before moving to Texas, reported. “I sat in a corner and cried for two months, but I stated to myself, ‘I’m heading to have to pivot. I have to figure this out.'”
And figure it out she did — by the conclude of her initially year at Keller Williams, she’d shut $8 million in true-estate transactions and surpassed her income as a news anchor. In 2021, four decades immediately after she acquired her start off, she manufactured virtually $900,000 in gross earnings.
“I took my job as a news anchor, my marketing expertise, and leveraged every thing I experienced and who I was, and I used that in actual estate,” Jang said. “I created my journalism profession on interactions, communication, and integrity, and I parlayed all that into my new vocation rather seamlessly.”
Here’s how she developed a business enterprise that’s thrived as a result of social media and organic advertising.
Building the pivot
Jang’s curiosity in real estate was spurred by her activities searching for residences.
“I had bought and offered properties in the past, and I knew how very little my Realtor did for me,” Jang explained. “I was like, ‘I can do this superior than you, and you’re not even advocating for me.'”
Another advantage, she included, was the prospect to be her possess boss and set her individual work hrs.
In 2017, just after expending roughly a thirty day period doing a six-aspect online study course with the Champions University of Actual Estate, Jang declared her job adjust on Facebook and right away began getting messages from old high-school mates and colleagues inquiring whether she would take on their listings. Three months afterwards, she had three properties in her portfolio — two of which were being luxury properties priced at much more than $750,000.
Jang worked 80-hour weeks for the initial 6 months.
“I don’t forget crying at the conclusion of some months from pure exhaustion,” she explained. “I realized that my company was only dependent on me obtaining a way to current market myself in different ways and on a larger system when there had been tens of countless numbers of other Realtors out there.”
Right now, Jang has identified a greater do the job-existence balance and has outsourced several features of her business enterprise, including hiring a transaction coordinator to manage paperwork and a complete-time certified assistant to support in a variety of responsibilities.
Utilizing social media and Tv set to appeal to customers
Jang claimed her unique technique to selling helped her construct a organization solely from referrals and organic and natural lookups from sellers, potential buyers, investors, renters, and fellow actual-estate agents. For her prospects, Jang supplies video clips, property staging, and Instagram publicity on her account, which has 35,000 followers.
“I’ve hardly ever built a solitary cold simply call, and I’ve under no circumstances knocked on any doorways. My organization is 70{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502} referral from day a single and 30{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502} social media,” she claimed. “My Television track record gave me an natural platform of folks who felt they understood me, reliable me, and needed to function with me.”
On social media, Jang walks via quite a few of the wonderful, glossy attributes of a residence but also details to instructional articles that possible buyers would want to spend interest to, like ceilings that have experienced past restore operate, wall corners that give clues to the condition of a home’s basis, and other factors that reveal the structural integrity of a house.
Jang also shares on social media what she does off the clock, like her overseas vacation and fantastic dining. She said this is underrated amid actual-estate brokers, primarily when they want to do the job with luxurious clientele, many of whom likely want input on great places to eat and travel locations.
“It exhibits people all the levels of who I am, how I travel, what my hobbies are, and what true estate appears like in other areas of the entire world,” she stated. “Individuals do the job with persons they like and come to feel most related to.”
Jang has also been able to use her broadcasting background to her benefit, first with a neighborhood section identified as “Lily’s List” on KPRC, then, after that was canceled because of Hurricane Harvey, a 30-moment true-estate display identified as “Home 2 Home with Lily Jang,” the place she attributes household listings as very well as interviews with loan companies, builders, interior designers, and other true-estate gurus.
Jang’s connections and working experience in the broadcasting world assisted her link up with Jerry Martin, the now retired basic manager of KPRC. He brainstormed different real-estate-demonstrate tips with Jang prior to landing on the principle for “Lily’s Checklist” immediately after Jang confirmed him a online video sample of what she had in brain.
“I imagine I shut 3 transactions in the quick 6 months we were being on the air,” she mentioned. “‘Lily’s List’ was just as critical as social media for me in achieving prospective purchasers.”
Promoting homes in the present-day industry
When fluctuating curiosity rates and slowing demand from customers may possibly make other real-estate agents anxious, Jang isn’t as well worried about the improve of speed. She claimed that even though stock is very low, she’s nevertheless seeing various gives on homes with crucial attributes, these kinds of as excellent neighborhoods and the correct cost stage. Jang’s tips to people obtaining in Houston is to always order a property zoned to trustworthy, well-rated schools.
As for her self-confidence in how she’ll perform in a tighter, a lot more-aggressive market, Jang said she’s glad to flip a page on the wildness that 2021 and early 2022 introduced. She reported there was an influx of “tens of thousands of new” real-estate agents who benefited from historically small desire charges, which created genuine-estate transactions more quickly, much easier, and additional lucrative, but now periods are significantly more durable.
“When the sector shifts like this and normalizes, there’s a systemic exodus of brokers because not all brokers are earning profits they are employed to in order to make a dwelling,” she claimed. “The Realtors who benefited from a sturdy sector are now not creating as considerably.
“They have dues to spend without having closings, so our market has normalized and new brokers who got into the match throughout the surge of history home profits didn’t always need to have inventive internet marketing competencies, organization scheduling, and putting in the do the job and hustle to make product sales, and a lot of have to transform to a salaried position with much more protection.”
Jang reported she thinks the actual-estate agents who will succeed are the ones entirely invested and built-in in the industry, as opposed to people without the need of a “pulse on the industry every one day.”
