Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nicole Walker. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Nicole, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. When you were first starting out, did you join a firm or start your own?

Starting out as a real estate agent in North Carolina, it’s required to be affiliated with a firm for the first 2 year of full time experience. So, I joined a team with a great friend and was bubbling over with excitement and enthusiasm and ready to start a new business. Motivated to achieve my goals, I knew I was in the right place because this firm aligned their culture with my core values.

What I didn’t know was what it was like to start a business. I had no experience with business planning and ran through my savings in a matter of a few months all while helping to support my mom financially. So I worked even harder, I doubled down on my training and education and lead generation. I started doing 5 open houses a weekend, I was persistent in follow up, I made client experience an essential part of my service, and was always expanding my knowledge of the market. I even added Lyft, Uber, and Instacart anywhere I could and slept minimally to make ends meet so I could keep meeting my goals and building my business.

Then success started to roll in, I was able to start paying bills and survive on real estate alone. But I always kept my eyes open to networking and opportunities even though I was so happy at my current firm and on my current team. I wasn’t searching for anything actively.

I was on a team that focused on New Construction as a main source of business, and I was helping 70% of my buyers purchase new construction when an opportunity came up to join the team at True Homes, my favorite builder to work with. At first I was terrified to leap again into the unknown, so I sat down with a friend at the company and picked their brain on what it was like to work there. I did research, I leaned on my owned experience selling with them, and then I watched everyday for months for the job opening to post. When it did I jumped on that opportunity and went full force and haven’t looked back.

The entire journey has most definitely been the best decision. It’s had hardships and tough moments. I’ve had to set boundaries and separated from relationships along the way. But I’ve also become financially independent, purchased a beautiful home on a beautiful large lot, bought a dream car that was a goal for me, married and started a multi-cultural/bilingual family, created new and stronger friendships and relationships, and serviced hundreds of clients that are now friends and family members while receiving world class training and constantly working on my craft. I also now have a partnership that allows me to have 4 days off every other week for more work life balance and a company that encourages us to think of others and give back to the community. I feel fulfilled and constantly growing, challenged, and changing! I’m three years in here and five years in to real estate and can’t wait for the coming years!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I was born in Wilmington, NC and moved to Cary, NC when I was 4 and watched that area boom with the rise of real estate development in the Triangle area of NC. That’s what really peaked my interest in growth and development.

I also developed a passion while in school for education and wanted to be a teacher but was very unhappy with the disparity in socioeconomic backgrounds and the access to education and so didn’t pursue my education degree in college at ECU and after trying out Public Relations, I spent time with my dad who was living in the UK with his wife for a while and traveled.

After wandering through jobs aimlessly for a while, I developed a knack for sales out of a desire to genuinely help people and do good work. I had a fantastic friend and coach in one of my positions encourage me to get my real estate license and from there it was history!

In my position with True Homes, I represent the builder while guiding clients through their home building process with the largest privately owned builder in NC/SC. As a semi-custom builder we have so many options and combinations so it’s our job to help them choose the best options for them in their budget and keep clear communication between the clients and their agents as well. We also spend a large amount of our time and resources on real estate agent relationships and education. We teach seminars and workshops and help them build their businesses. Everything from lead generation, overcoming fear, being more social, social media tips and tricks, timeblocking and scheduling, market data, and pitch perfection workshops.

What sets me apart is that passion for education and genuinely wanting to help people and do good work. It keeps me motivated and positive during hard and challenging times.

I’m most proud of the experience I’ve built and how I’ve been able to share that and the impact I’ve been able to make throughout the community with helping agents and clients to do things they thought they thought they wouldn’t be able to do.

I’m constantly hearing from followers and my network that they are so impressed with how I manage to get everything done. And then how stressed they are about doing the same thing. So the one thing I would want them to know is that life is messy and Instagram isn’t real, it’s curated.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Over two years ago in 2020, covid changed the world. In March, I had just gotten promoted to a fully commissioned sales role in my organization at True Homes and was all enthusiastic and geared up to get out there and make sales and everything shut down. Clients weren’t allowed to get out and see homes, people were uncertain about the future, and some were losing their jobs.

I was so blessed to be with a company that held our job security tightly. No one was laid off due to covid. We were declared essential and allowed to come to work and keep building and selling homes. But where would the sales come from? How do we connect with buyers?

I leaned HARD into the virtual world. I had always wanted to build a sales platform on social media so I started studying that. I consistently posted, created a very rough brand image, a general social media strategy and rolled with it. I started offering “virtual open houses” before anyone really knew what that meant and grabbed every free agent who would meet with me to get to know them and tell them about who we are and why we value them.

It was my opinion that once things settle out, we would have pent up demand and the flood gates would open. And then they did.

And I was primed and ready. My company was primed and ready. And my career took off. And we were able to service a record number of clients, build quality homes, and continue to pay agents some of the highest commissions in the industry. All while winning National Builder of the Year from ProBuilder Magazine. It was amazing.

Then it was exahausting. The demand was grueling. It never ended. We were writing contracts til midnight. We didn’t want to go to highest and best offers, but we had to. We couldn’t get through first come/first serve without multiple offers so to make it fair we structured it with a timeline. We were getting $80k over on lots. Appraisal gaps didn’t seem to bother anyone. I was taking appointments with med students who had $1,000,000 in cash who couldn’t find a home because of the amount of the demand.

We knew it would shift. Something would come to slow this down. Our company planned for it. We trained for it. We worked on salesmanship and relationships. We treated people right and built quality homes.

And then the interest rates peaked at 6% and buyer interest dropped significantly. Which finally gave us some breathing room. We still have more buyers than homes available by a long shot, it’s still a seller’s market. The ratios vary based on location and pricing. Instead of appreciating at 30% year over year, our area is projected to appreciate at 5-8%. A much more normal rate (normal as in where we were 3-4 years ago.)

And we are ready for it. We are better for it. It’s exciting. We can help people. We have land to provide housing through 2024 at minimum and are buying more. We can focus on affordability again. It’s never fun when it’s only winning or only challenges. It’s fun when you get to be challenged and you get to win.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best source of clients for me is hands down my Realtor partners. Our company spends more money on agent commissions than on marketing and we always pay 3% commissions on the total purchase price of the home. We also have a special Core Broker partnership program to foster repeat business with strategic partners. We offer up our resources to build up these small businesses in our community and we truly buy in and believe in them! With 95% of our deals in the Triangle area last year being with agents and converting 50% of the traffic that comes from our Core Brokers, it’s just smart business to have this be the main source of our leads.
It’s also fun to spend the time networking and partnering with others in the industry as a main portion of my business and being able to tap into the educational portion of my passion at the same time.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.truehomesusa.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicolewtruehomes/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicolewtruehomes
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-walker-bb41a960/