Editorial
Front Page - Friday, February 4, 2011
Williams challenges herself to hone technical edge
Erica Tuggle
After switching from the mortgage business to real estate, Lea Ann Williams has been working in this market for 20 years. She says now agents will have to make sure they are on the cutting edge of technology and all its tools as they work more and more from a virtual office, and the days of MLS sheets, driving clients around, late night researching and repeating this process are quickly disappearing.
- Erica Tuggle
Lea Ann Williams will be the first to admit she’s got a lot of work to do this year. Especially since real estate is being operated more and more from a “virtual office,” many, including Williams, will have to beef up their geek skills in order to provide the technology edge clients are seeking. To aid this process, Re/Max, including the Shallowford Road location where Williams is an agent, is hosting a technological conference in March to put their agents in the know and get them up to speed on the latest trends.
“Gone are the days of MLS sheets and riding people around. Now you’re up till midnight researching, then you meet them again and do the same thing,” Williams says. “PDAs, laptops, wi-fi, iPads – they are all in our laps and we are able to work from almost anywhere in our virtual office.”
Williams admits it is challenging to learn the new gadgets since she didn’t grow up with a cell phone or a PDA, and was lucky if she had a pager or fax machine.
“Lots of times your customers can be smarter than you and more ‘techie’ than you, so we are scrambling. I am the first to say, “I’m not on the edge but I need to be, and that’s my goal for 2011: to become really smart and have the advantage, because laziness will kill you in this field,” Williams says.
Williams decided to join real estate after working in the mortgage business. As she helped clients through the loan process, she realized she wanted to do more than the paper work, and experience more of the client enthusiasm than there was on the tail end of the deal. She began to work for a construction company, where she got into property management, and that led her to get her real estate license.
Twenty years later, she is still going strong in the business, and with her lifelong resident knowledge of Chattanooga, she knows the areas she sells extremely well. She is currently selling hot properties in the Brock Point subdivision, located behind U.S. Express and overlooking the new Volkswagen Plant. They have already had a family relocate from Germany to this subdivision, and with the proximity to the plant and the Amazon warehouse, Williams says, these properties have been a blessing in disguise.
Within these 120 lots, they try to keep everything similar, but not the same, she says. Buying carpet, light fixtures, granite and other products in bulk, they are able to pass savings on to the customers while providing amenities in these houses that many buyers are looking for.
She says, “We are also now a third generation company on the building side. My husband’s father started it, my husband is in the business, and now our stepson is in the business. We know our product well, and if anyone is able to build a house cheaper with the amenities we are able to offer, I would love to see them try.”
Working with first time homebuyers is something Will-iams loves, but as Chattanooga has changed, so has the market, and now she is working with referrals, retirees and entire families as this business has come full circle. She says her favorite thing about the business is meeting all the new people.
“Their enthusiasm when they come to you and are bright eyed and bushy tailed, and are so excited with that new prequalification letter in hand, and now they are clueless,” she says. “You really have to pay attention to each person individually. To them, it’s their first experience; to me, it might be my 2000th person, but you’ve got to remember that this is probably the biggest investment they are ever going to make.”
She says since her clients are looking to her for guidance, she knows to pay attention to their needs and listen to what they want. With this comes the most difficult and challenging thing all Realtors are going through now: the loan process.
“Guidelines that worked a year ago do not work today, and some don’t even work from last week. Everything is changing. I think it’s critical we have to have a great rapport and relationship with a mortgage broker, preferably someone local, someone you can call on nights and weekends when we work,” she says.
A buyer’s dream can quickly turn into a nightmare if there is no backup plan when the loan process falls through, she says.
“If you don’t have a backup plan with a local broker, or if you are just taking their word on a piece of paper they have picked up from some online mortgage company, you need to be prepared because nothing will upset a seller quicker than a deal falling apart when you really haven’t worked with your client to come to the table with the documents they need to get to the end,” Williams says.
Williams can share her firsthand knowledge for this advice, as she has a broker’s license in Tennessee and Florida, and says the Florida market was hit much harder than Tennessee or Chattanooga.
In Williams’s, “free time” she
is usually traveling with her family or spending time at her other office in the Florida panhandle.
As Williams works on her skills for the new year, she says she feels confident in being
at Re/Max.
“We are strong in 68 countries. So if I can’t help you when you’re in Minnesota or in Capri, Italy, I have a connection to someone who can and who has the same high standards that we do,” she says.
With the unfortunate disappearance of many of the Mom and Pop businesses in this market, Williams says she thinks it’s a great idea to align yourself with a company this strong and worldwide.
“Because now I think we are a global real estate market, not a state real estate market. When we expand our mind borders, we can only get to do more.”
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