Nancy Ellis has heard friends dote on her real estate career, remarking what fun it must be to look at pretty houses all day. Ellis laughs as she recounts this, and states the truth that all good Realtors know. Real estate is not about looking at pretty houses. But Ellis may surprise some when she says it’s also not about sales.
As an 18-year veteran of the business, Ellis says that to her, real estate is about the real friendships, not merely business partnerships, she forms with Realtors and clients in the process. It’s about the happiness that comes to both the Realtor and the client when a deal comes out as a win-win situation. Real estate is also about consistency and keeping positive, even when things look down, she adds. About 18 years ago, Ellis had never even thought about going into real estate. Raised and schooled in Rossville, Ga., she focused on being a mom, helping her accountant brother-in-law during tax season, and took a few odd college classes. She spoke with a friend at church who asked her about going into real estate as partners. Ellis made the leap, and although the friend retired her license after six months, Ellis has hung tight as a Realtor and still loves what she does.
Ellis’s husband is also in the business as a builder with his own company, David Ellis Construction. He has built all over Chattanooga from Cummings Cove to Hamilton on Hunter, and he does a lot of custom houses in the canyons and wherever anybody needs him, she says. With the new construction market being the hardest hit in these times, right now the relationship as builder husband and Realtor wife doesn’t help a whole lot, Ellis says. But the contacts that her husband has and she has and are able to share are invaluable. When she sells a house, he’s there too to help get repairs done. And as the president of his former company, a commercial cleaning business, he has business sense that Ellis says she uses to bounce ideas off of him.
Ellis gives advice to new Realtors that she followed when she was starting out: just hang in there. She says it helps if Realtors are always talking about their business, being consistent and remaining upbeat about what they do. “I want to represent my client but I don’t think you have to do it in an aggressive way,” Ellis says. “To me, if everyone has a positive attitude, we can make it work.”
As a Keller Williams agent at the newly remodeled office off of East Brainerd road, Ellis is a consultant and not a salesperson, she says. If someone wants to buy a house, she consults with them to see what they need. She says she would rather see people she is working with happy than worry about the sales aspect. Good Realtors also know the market, she says. “Know what you are talking about and if you don’t know the answer, don’t make up something. Just say, ‘I don’t know this, but I will find out though.’ I may not be able to do what you are asking me to do, but I can send you to the right person and I try to have contacts that way too.”
Ellis was with another company for quite a few years before Keller Williams, but says she transferred over to Keller Williams because of many of their aspects that she finds “fabulous.” First, Keller Williams is a teaching and training company and is different in that they are an agent run company with an agent leadership council to address their Realtors’ needs and concerns. “It’s not just about things going back to the owners. We try to give it back to the agents,” she says.
The brokers at Keller Williams are also different in that they do not list or sell. They are there solely for their agents, they consult with them and they train them, Ellis says. “They help us to get our business up and growing, because if we are doing what we are supposed to be doing, the whole company grows. We have added eight new agents in the last two months because this is the place to be,” she adds. Ellis has her CRS, GRI, and ABR and says that even though she’s been in the business for 18 years, she still goes to classes to get her training in and stay up to date.
“I like the job done and if you want me to do it tomorrow, I like it done yesterday,” Ellis says. It may be this kind of attitude that earned Ellis the “Rookie of the Year” title during her first year of real estate. Ellis keeps on her track to success by setting goals for herself for the next year during the previous November. These goals mean that Ellis knows how many calls she has to make, how many people she has to talk to in order to make the money to buy groceries, pay her bills, stay on top of the market, and give back as well.
She says Keller Williams also has a philosophy of giving back and in November will have a vendor’s day in which the proceeds will go to the Habitat for Humanity. Keller Williams also has the KW Cares program that works to help different agents within the Keller Williams family that are having a hard time.
With three married children and seven grandchildren, Ellis says busy with ballgames, slumber parties and birthday shopping for all of her family. Keller Williams matches this aspect of her life as well in their three priorities: God first, family and then business. “That’s another reason I truly love them and love real estate,” Ellis says.