NicSellsMontana HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

Today I am officially TIRED.

Today I am also OFFICIALLY RETIRED!

WHEE! What a hell of a ride it’s been! After 45 years of selling real estate as a solo agent and single mom, I’ve decided to hang up my license. Voluntarily, I might add. Enough is Enough. Looking back (mostly fondly) on a long, exhausting, frequently ridiculous, but
wonderfully rewarding career, here ‘s what made me TIRED:

1. Total closed sales: 1,034. Yes, I kept track.
2. Clients who still liked me AFTER closing: 1,031. That’s a 99.7% approval rating! (Quite frankly, there were barely 1000 Clients I still liked after closing.)
3. Fewest homes shown before a sale: 1. God bless that buyer, and the one other couple who also only looked at one home. More than 30 years later, both are still in those homes.
4. Most homes shown before a sale: 86. My VERY FIRST CLIENT. Apparently, the universe was testing just how badly I needed this job – I needed it BADLY!
5. Most homes bought/sold for one client: 16. This person LOVED me and I made him rich!
6. Shortest escrow: 3 days. Barely enough time to remember their name.
7. Largest sale: $6,400,000. CASH! Lots of zeroes, only a few pages of paperwork.
8. Smallest sale: $11,000. An estate with FOUR heirs. Four opinions, four sets of signatures, and eleven thousand opportunities for something to go wrong. Way more paperwork than the $6.4 million sale. Fewer zeros in both price and commission.
9. Sale I’m proudest of: $18,000. I helped a homeless man use a small inheritance to buy a mobile home. Never met him or saw what he bought. My commission was $287 and a testament to my Motto – I never showed or sold a property based on commission.
10. Most sales in one year: 44. No computers, no cell phones. I vaguely remember sleeping. I don’t think I had a personal life, I may have had a baby, but that year is still a blur.
11. Fewest sales in one year: 2. TWO! We’ve all had those years. (Haven’t we?)
12. Number of brokers: 5. Three in San Diego, two in Montana. A couple of them even survived the fluctuating markets of the 80s and 90s.
13. Longest listing: 34 YEARS! Yes, THIRTY-FOUR YEARS, off and on. One of my first listings, and Seller always relisted at a HIGHER price. Finally sold and closed in 2018. Persistence? Stubbornness? Grit? Sheer Determination to never give up? One of my clients once told me I had the patience of Death – and he didn’t even know about this land listing.
14. Times that a listing sold before actually closing: 8. (See #13 above) EIGHT buyers, EIGHT escrows, EIGHT premature celebrations. NOW you understand why most Agents quit real estate careers if they start out with even two disappointments like this.

But here’s what’s behind those numbers:
For 45 years, I helped people buy their first homes, dream homes, retirement homes, and even homes they should have thought about a little longer. I celebrated, worried, negotiated, cried, and even contemplated changing my phone number and leaving the country on occasion.

To my clients and fellow agents: THANK YOU for giving me a livelihood, wonderful memories, and enough material to write several books. Some clients and some agents have become life-long friends. A few characters became chapters in my book. Some may be chapters in future books.

To my brokers: THANK YOU to The Jelley Company, for hiring a novice and not making me cry in public; Dyson and Dyson Real Estate, for adopting all of us when Jelley closed; Sea Coast Exclusive Properties, for becoming my third real estate family; and RE/MAX, for
honoring me with its Hall of Fame Award.  I EARNED IT. I DESERVED IT. and I’m not embarrassed to say so!

My wild-and-woolly early years are chronicled in my memoir, which debuted at #1 on Amazon’s Memoir list and stayed there for several months:

Pandora’s Lockbox: A Wild and Wacky Real Estate Memoir

Stories of Love, Sex, Murders, and an Alligator.

(And those were the things I could LEGALLY write about by changing names. I’m tired- not stupid.)

So, after 45 years, 1,034 closings, countless adventures, spectacular headaches, and characters no sane person could invent, I’m closing out the Career Chapter of my life.

Will I miss real estate? ABSOLUTELY.  Will I miss the paperwork, deadlines, inspections, appraisals, impossible sellers, indecisive buyers, ego-centric other agents, and deals falling apart days before closing?   NOT FOR ONE MINUTE!

Like I said, it’s been one hell of a ride. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to sleep in and watch Price is Right on TV as I  have absolutely NOTHING on my Daytimer calendar. Well, except time for my next book.                WHEE!