Editorial
Front Page - Friday, July 2, 2010
Realtor mother-son team enjoy taking things personally
Erica Tuggle
Realtor Trey Corum and his mother and assistant Ellie Corum-Mitchell work as a team for Remax properties. Corum says he employs honesty and integrity to allow his clients to open up and find the property that is right for them. He says his mother’s 32 years of knowledge of the mortgage and realty business also helps with unfamiliar areas that arise.
- Erica Tuggle
If your mother knew all business concerning every detail of your office life to her personal relationship with you, would you feel uneasy? For Remax Realtor Trey Corum he says that having his mother, Ellie Corum-Mitchell, on his realty team as his assistant is a priceless treasure in having an accountable and hard-working partner.
He says he had heard all his life of his mother’s stellar reputation in Chattanooga in real estate and banking, but didn’t realize how true that was until they partnered up. If anyone takes a look at the top sellers, they see a team behind them, he says.
In enlisting the help of his mother, he picked one of the most knowledgeable people in the world of realty and mortgage lending as well with Mitchell’s 32 years experience, from earning a real estate and broker’s license, managing a real estate office and working in mortgage and private banking.
The reason for the accumulation of accolades and experience has a sad root as she made the choice to double her work efforts in banking and real estate to provide for her four children after her husband died suddenly in 1990. Corum was still at Baylor at that time, his sister was attending college and more income was needed for the family, so Mitchell went into lending and built herself up with grueling 12 hour days, sometimes for seven days a week.
Corum says the death of his father caused their family to go into a spiral, and realize how much they were depending on him as the patriarch of the family. Corum was in the service industry at the time, but with this occurrence, he changed the direction of his life.
“All of a sudden I found myself looking in the mirror and having to grow up quickly,” he says. “I wanted to look in the mirror and be proud like my father was of himself and of me.”
With the encouragement of his family, he got his real estate license six years ago. At that time, Mitchell was working as an office administrator at Remax, and when her son was hired on he asked her to come out of retirement and assist his clients in mortgage help, following leads, helping with paperwork and picking up the slack.
Corum says the way his mother served her clients by building personal relationships has rubbed off on him. He says building bonds with clients are a big deal to him because real estate is the largest thing someone will buy in their life, and he understands the stress they undergo.
“It is stressful and people don’t always act their normal self because they are going through a lot. So you have to do a lot of counseling,” he says. “You put a new mask on and not take things personally to do, depending on what your client needs at the time, whatever to change their tempo.”
Corum says real estate appealed to him because he knew he could be his own boss and that the sky is the limit as long as a Realtor sticks to serving their client and thereby building their referral network.
Mitchell agrees saying, “No matter how successful you are you have got to stay with the basics. If a Realtor learns that and keeps it in their agenda, then you don’t have ups and downs in pay.”
Another one of Corum’s personal basics is dealing in honesty and integrity, which he says he feels is absolutely necessary in this business.
This is the part of the business that he knows the frustration of, he says, as some involved in real estate lack the personal connection with clients that Realtors have, and their procrastination sometimes cause heartache for clients and Realtors alike. The heartache of his clients is something that affects Corum as he invests his emotions into every client’s situation.
He says, “Some agents can be business-like no matter what comes up and don’t take it personally. I am not like that. When you see their hurt, you feel it.”
Mitchell says she can tell her son has a passionate excitement for his work, because he can talk endlessly about it.
Corum is also excited for his city’s advancement that has made it easy to sell property to those from out of town, he says. He sees people coming to Chattanooga now to retire with the amenities of mountains, waterways, nightlife and what a city needs to have as an attraction for their settling, and he says the selling is helped by the beauty of Chattanooga and the Remax name that signifies quality agents and experience.
Corum says he hopes to make his way into residential development in the future and manage his own subdivision.
“It is fun to watch a neighborhood go from ground zero into a blossoming neighborhood,” he says.
Having a partner like Mitchell also allows for Corum to enjoy time away from the office as a newlywed with his first home and an out of the ordinary hobby called “Fly Ball.” His wife, Kate, and he train extensively and travel to different states with their golden retriever and border staffy, Emma and Vito, to compete in this four-dog relay race that is chaotic and very loud, he says. He also likes to go saltwater fishing, he says, because of the mystery on what he will catch next.
Whether his trusty assistant is watching the realty business for him, or he is elbow deep in giving his personal best for a client, he says it is all about the people.
“It’s about the inner glow and that smile that people have on their faces when a sale reaches fruition,” he says. “It’s about that personal connection with people. I need that, and if I don’t have that I will wither away.”
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