- Lily Jang grew to become a true-estate agent in 2017 just after working mostly as a broadcast-news anchor.
- She acquired into real estate simply because she’d had negative ordeals with brokers and desired adaptable several hours.
- To stand out to her consumers, she features social-media marketing, home staging, and Television placement.
Just before she was a prosperous real-estate agent closing on nearly $28 million in promotions in 2022, Lily Jang was a news anchor for KHOU-Television set in Houston.
She never ever would’ve remaining the broadcasting environment, she told Insider, experienced the Tv set station not long gone by means of a management alter and subsequent layoffs.
“You always know in the again of your head this could occur: New management arrives in, and they’re likely to cleanse household, and you could be a casualty — and which is exactly what occurred to me,” she explained.
The blow was particularly hard for her due to the fact 1 of the most important explanations she moved to Houston was to choose treatment of her getting older moms and dads, primarily her father, who has Parkinson’s illness. In contrast to other broadcasters who could select up and shift to a further town for a career, Jang desired to keep and take care of her relatives.
“That was the most devastating time in my lifetime. Anyone else would’ve springboarded to Chicago, New York, LA, or Miami, but I could not,” Jang, who had labored in other states right before relocating to Texas, stated. “I sat in a corner and cried for two weeks, but I claimed to myself, ‘I’m going to have to pivot. I have to determine this out.'”
And figure it out she did — by the close of her initial calendar year at Keller Williams, she’d shut $8 million in authentic-estate transactions and surpassed her income as a information anchor. In 2021, four several years soon after she obtained her commence, she built nearly $900,000 in gross earnings.
“I took my job as a information anchor, my marketing skills, and leveraged every thing I had and who I was, and I used that in true estate,” Jang stated. “I developed my journalism career on associations, communication, and integrity, and I parlayed all that into my new profession very seamlessly.”
Here’s how she built a business that’s thrived through social media and organic advertising and marketing.
Building the pivot
Jang’s fascination in real estate was spurred by her encounters browsing for properties.
“I experienced purchased and marketed houses in the earlier, and I knew how minimal my Realtor did for me,” Jang stated. “I was like, ‘I can do this greater than you, and you’re not even advocating for me.'”
An additional reward, she extra, was the prospect to be her individual boss and established her possess operate hours.
In 2017, after shelling out about a month executing a 6-component online course with the Champions School of True Estate, Jang declared her occupation alter on Fb and instantly began obtaining messages from outdated superior-school good friends and colleagues inquiring regardless of whether she would take on their listings. A few months afterwards, she had three houses in her portfolio — two of which were luxury households priced at far more than $750,000.
Jang labored 80-hour months for the to start with 6 months.
“I keep in mind crying at the stop of some months from pure exhaustion,” she reported. “I knew that my company was entirely dependent on me obtaining a way to market place myself in another way and on a greater platform when there have been tens of thousands of other Realtors out there.”
Currently, Jang has uncovered a superior get the job done-life balance and has outsourced quite a few facets of her organization, which includes selecting a transaction coordinator to deal with paperwork and a complete-time certified assistant to support in numerous responsibilities.
Working with social media and Tv set to appeal to shoppers
Jang said her distinctive strategy to offering helped her develop a business enterprise totally from referrals and organic and natural searches from sellers, potential buyers, buyers, renters, and fellow true-estate brokers. For her prospects, Jang supplies videos, house staging, and Instagram publicity on her account, which has 35,000 followers.
“I’ve hardly ever produced a single cold contact, and I have never ever knocked on any doorways. My business is 70% referral from day just one and 30% social media,” she stated. “My Television track record gave me an natural and organic system of folks who felt they knew me, dependable me, and wished to perform with me.”
On social media, Jang walks by way of a lot of of the lovely, shiny options of a residence but also factors to instructional content material that possible buyers would want to pay back attention to, like ceilings that have had preceding repair service do the job, wall corners that give clues to the situation of a home’s foundation, and other items that show the structural integrity of a dwelling.
Jang also shares on social media what she does off the clock, like her abroad travel and wonderful eating. She stated this is underrated among serious-estate agents, specially when they want to do the job with luxurious consumers, many of whom most likely want enter on good places to eat and travel destinations.
“It reveals folks all the layers of who I am, how I journey, what my hobbies are, and what real estate appears to be like in other areas of the entire world,” she explained. “Folks do the job with folks they like and sense most related to.”
Jang has also been equipped to use her broadcasting history to her benefit, initial with a community section known as “Lily’s Record” on KPRC, then, after that was canceled for the reason that of Hurricane Harvey, a 30-minute serious-estate display identified as “Home 2 Household with Lily Jang,” where by she options household listings as well as interviews with creditors, builders, inside designers, and other authentic-estate gurus.
Jang’s connections and practical experience in the broadcasting earth helped her url up with Jerry Martin, the now retired general supervisor of KPRC. He brainstormed different real-estate-clearly show concepts with Jang right before landing on the idea for “Lily’s List” after Jang confirmed him a video clip sample of what she experienced in mind.
“I consider I closed a few transactions in the limited six months we ended up on the air,” she claimed. “‘Lily’s List’ was just as important as social media for me in achieving probable clients.”
Promoting houses in the present marketplace
When fluctuating interest fees and slowing demand from customers could make other genuine-estate brokers nervous, Jang isn’t too concerned about the change of tempo. She explained that even though inventory is low, she’s nonetheless viewing numerous presents on residences with crucial characteristics, such as terrific neighborhoods and the ideal price position. Jang’s tips to these getting in Houston is to usually invest in a dwelling zoned to highly regarded, well-rated colleges.
As for her self esteem in how she’ll execute in a tighter, much more-aggressive market, Jang reported she’s glad to convert a site on the wildness that 2021 and early 2022 brought. She said there was an inflow of “tens of countless numbers of new” real-estate agents who benefited from historically minimal fascination charges, which produced real-estate transactions a lot quicker, less complicated, and much more rewarding, but now situations are considerably harder.
“When the market place shifts like this and normalizes, there is certainly a systemic exodus of agents simply because not all brokers are generating income they are utilised to in purchase to make a living,” she said. “The Realtors who benefited from a robust current market are now not making as a lot.
“They have dues to shell out without having closings, so our market has normalized and new brokers who acquired into the recreation in the course of the surge of report property profits did not always require imaginative advertising and marketing competencies, business planning, and placing in the function and hustle to make profits, and numerous have to turn to a salaried position with more stability.”
Jang claimed she believes the serious-estate agents who will triumph are the types absolutely invested and integrated in the discipline, as opposed to people without the need of a “pulse on the current market just about every solitary working day.”
