Episode 164 Transcript: Amy Neuer
On this episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we have Amy Neuer from Preview Properties!
To watch the full episode, check it out on YouTube below. To listen, head over to Apple Podcasts. In the meantime, here’s a summary of the conversation…
Here’s what you missed from Amy Neuer…
00:00:00:14 –> 00:00:03:17
Taylor: Welcome to The Brad and Taylor show today, we have Amy Neuer.
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Brad: You’re listening to the Brad and Taylor Show, a podcast that inspires entrepreneurs to pursue their passions. We’re sitting down with some of the best to learn how they got started and some lessons they learned along the way.
00:00:16:03 –> 00:00:18:27
Taylor: Hi Amy, how are you doing?
Amy: Great!
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Brad: I like it. I like it. Well, let’s get the show started. Tell us a little bit about you. What do you do?
00:00:25:18 –> 00:00:30:13
Amy: I am a realtor with Preview Properties in Brighton and a mom of five.
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Brad: Awesome. I like it, keeps you busy then, huh?
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Amy: Yes.
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Brad: When you were younger, did you want to be an agent when you grew up?
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Amy: I wanted to be a teacher.
00:00:43:03 –> 00:00:46:13
Brad: Nice. Did you do anything related to teaching at all?
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Amy: I nannied the first several years during college, but didn’t go the teacher route, went in a different direction.
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Brad: Nice. So when did you decide you wanted to be an agent or did it just fall into place? How did that go?
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Amy: Well, my dad was an architect in the West Bloomfield area, so I used to be a sales model in the houses. I always liked real estate, but I started out in the mortgage industry.
Brad: Nice.
Amy: So I worked in construction lending for the Fifth Third banks, and I did a lot of spec homes for builders and land development. When the market crashed, I thought about doing real estate.
00:01:33:16 –> 00:01:34:00
Brad: I like it.
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Taylor: How long have you been in real estate now?
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Amy: Seven years now, it has gone fast.
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Brad: Yes, it has. That’s crazy.
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Taylor: Take us to your first transaction Amy, how did it go for you?
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Amy: That’s a crazy story, but in my first transaction, I got fired. Oh, no, but I mean, it wasn’t really an issue with me. It just had a lot to do with the family, but I literally burnt my house down, cleaning out their closets for them.
00:02:10:23 –> 00:02:11:26
Brad: Wait, you burnt the house down?
00:02:11:26 –> 00:02:13:21
Amy: Tried to help them. What’s that?
00:02:13:24 –> 00:02:15:23
Brad: You burnt the house down?
00:02:15:23 –> 00:02:45:08
Amy: Burnt my house down. Not burnt it but I had a pot of soup on the stove and I thought I put it on low but it went too high, and I ran out to help this family because I was like over helping them with the situation. I was cleaning their closets and I think what I learned from that is, you know, we have a job as a realtor to do our job and sometimes our hearts want to be kind and overhelp, but you have to know your boundaries. Yeah.
00:02:45:09 –> 00:02:52:23
Taylor: Yes. And I think that’s something that is definitely learned with time. So your house, it, it burnt down because of the pot of soup?
00:02:52:29 –> 00:03:09:06
Amy: It didn’t actually burn down. We had smoke, the pot condensed and had, I guess they called it like a smoke fight, you know, we had to vacate our house for six months. It was pretty crazy.
00:03:09:17 –> 00:03:15:12
Brad: Well, that’s a way for your first transaction. It’s crazy.
Taylor: I’m sure you learned a lot from it though.
00:03:16:06 –> 00:03:28:05
Amy: I think you learn from every transaction and you’re still learning, you know, at this point. I don’t think you ever stop learning in real estate. No two transactions are the same.
00:03:29:10 –> 00:03:37:29
Taylor: How long was it before you got your first couple of transactions after that initial one? Was it a little while, a couple of months in between, or were they kind of right away back to back?
00:03:39:01 –> 00:04:13:17
Amy: No, pretty quickly. I’m pretty acclimated to the community I live in. Having five kids, my husband used to be like the commissioner of football. I served on the PTO, we have a large network of people and I kind of solely work off referrals. So if I do a good job for someone and they tell somebody else, so I kind of consider myself more of a boutique realtor. I don’t do a lot of cold calling or as I say to scalpel and stranger danger. I don’t work with a lot of people that I actually don’t know.
00:04:14:21 –> 00:04:27:16
Brad: That’s good.
Taylor: That’s awesome you get those referrals. That’s the way to do it. So over the last seven years, I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of homes that maybe you don’t want to go back into. What one stands out to you the most for being the worst property?
00:04:29:22 –> 00:05:31:13
Amy: A few years back, I did a bunch of listings for a woman who had lost her brother. She was a wonderful lady but her brother had a bunch of properties that he had sold on a land contract. They basically went bad on the land contracts. We had to list the properties and there was one in downtown Brighton. I should have bought it because it was an awesome flip. I think it was my highest showings, like 60 showings and probably 15 offers. And it was awful. Like they put cigarettes out into the carpet, there was Sudafed all over. I think they were doing other things in there, but it was, it was pretty condemned. The best part though is when we saw it renovated because all these construction people were bidding at it to rehab it. Now it’s a beautiful house on that street. It’s kind of fun to take one of those and see the transformation.
00:05:31:13 –> 00:05:33:17
Taylor: And you had 60 showings?
00:05:34:08 –> 00:05:35:29
Amy: Yeah, that was a crazy one.
00:05:36:05 –> 00:05:42:12
Taylor: Yeah. So you were probably in there, in and out a lot, maybe more than you want it to be.
00:05:43:26 –> 00:06:01:24
Amy: Yeah, and other agents. People were bribing me for their offers. It was a crazy one, but the house, I mean, I talked about it for years. Like literally what you found in there. It was full of garbage and it was just totally not like anything I’d ever seen.
00:06:03:09 –> 00:06:08:04
Taylor: I know you mentioned that you have five kids and you’re a working mother. How do you balance everything?
00:06:09:20 –> 00:07:16:10
Amy: Oh, I’m OCD. It’s a challenge like five seconds before I got on this call with you, my daughter just called with a fever from her school. So it’s a challenge to balance it. I’ve definitely had more success with time-blocking. I really try to block my day. I feel like I work hard for my clients, but I also value my family. So I think you need to put restrictions on that in how you work your business. I think if you set guidelines for yourself, people often respect that too. I think it’s really important. I lay out my week every Sunday, and then every day I lay out my day. Anything for my kids, like they play every sport and activity under the sun and I do think you can do it all. Do you know what I mean? I make myself available sometimes I have to step aside, but I’m definitely their biggest cheerleader at their events too.
00:07:16:17 –> 00:07:23:05
Brad: Yeah. That’s awesome. So if you had to start over today with all the knowledge you had now, what is one thing you would do differently?
00:07:24:23 –> 00:08:21:29
Amy: I would have done this earlier. My husband got laid off about three years before I went into real estate. Just for a short time, this company is a non-union company and it became a union company and I had to go back to work and I went back into mortgages again for slack star bank. At the time, I was really thinking about going into real estate, but you know, real estate, it’s one of those things you only get paid when you sell something. Right? It takes a little while to get those wheels spinning. I guess I was just afraid to take the dive at that point with our family situation. But in hindsight, like 5,000 bucks, I would have spent it on the real estate course and some marketing because I wish I would’ve just started earlier. I think it’s a great job. It has the flexibility I need with my family and I love what I do.
00:08:22:18 –> 00:08:26:18
Brad: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. What’s your favorite book you’ve read?
00:08:28:02 –> 00:09:05:00
Amy: So we are having Dr. Harry Cohen in our office and I’m currently reading this book, Be the Sun, Not the Salt. I think a lot of business books, they’re great, but I think a lot of these books are really about outlook and self-help and how you represent yourself and what you want to be. I do a lot of those types of books because that’s just kind of what I like to read. They’re nice, simple reads and they help us be better at what we do regardless of what the actual profession is.
00:09:05:08 –> 00:09:09:02
Brad: That’s awesome.
Taylor: I like the title of that one. Be the sun, not the salt.
00:09:09:10 –> 00:09:15:22
Amy: Yeah. And it’s for like all ages. I mean, you can incorporate this into business and how you want to raise your kids too.
00:09:16:24 –> 00:09:18:26
Brad: That’s like two for one.
Taylor: I need a new book. I’ll have to pick that one up.
00:09:20:11 –> 00:09:26:10
Amy: He’s coming to our office soon. So one of the stipulations is we all had to get through it so we can meet the author.
00:09:26:12 –> 00:09:30:29
Brad: That’s awesome. That’s cool. I like that. I like that you guys are doing that. That’s awesome. How can people get ahold of you?
00:09:32:08 –> 00:09:40:23
Amy: They can reach me at Preview Properties at Downtown Brighton. My cell is best (517) 281-7347.
00:09:41:12 –> 00:09:44:24
Brad: That’s awesome. Hey, thanks for coming out and sharing your story with us today.
00:09:44:24 –> 00:09:45:29
Amy: Thank you for having me.
00:09:50:07 –> 00:10:08:09
Hello. Hello. Are you there? Hey guys, we just wanted to thank you for listening on either a podcast or on the YouTube video here. If you guys wanted to subscribe, that would be awesome. That would mean a lot to us. If you guys could give us a five-star review as well, that would be amazing. And we’ll see you on the next one.
Check out Amy Neuer:
http://www.previewproperties.com/
Facebook: @amy.neuer
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