One of Andi’s earliest memories was going to visit her dad in his real estate office. Back then, there were no personal computers or internet searches. The binders filled with home listings stacked taller than she was, and the air smelled like carbon paper. As Andi grew older, she loved working with her family in real estate and construction. Ripping up wood foundations in a Sacramento summer was not easy work, but it was rewarding.
When Andi was seventeen, her dad was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Within a few weeks of his diagnosis, he looked at her on a trip home from the doctor and said, “We need to talk when we get home. Meet me in the kitchen.” “Meet me in the kitchen” was never a good expression. It meant she was in trouble, or a large bomb was about to be dropped. Andi sat in the kitchen and waited for him to feel up to coming in. He walked in, gestured for her to pull up a chair to the chalkboard, and started writing numbers.
After a few moments he turned around and looked at her, and said, “I might not be here, so this is how you do a real estate deal.” Over the next couple of hours, he went over the basic fundamentals of real estate, cash flow, and leveraging properties to build investment portfolios. He was leaving me his legacy. Four months later, her dad passed away, a week after she turned eighteen.
Andi started working as an Admin for Architectural and Engineering firms and entered the Holistic Health field thereafter. Although her life took her on a meandering path, she never forgot her night at the chalkboard. When Andi and her husband moved to Las Vegas at the end of 2007 the city was booming. People kept telling her that she had to buy a million-dollar condominium, but the numbers they were throwing around did not make sense and the growth rate was unsustainable. They were so far off the chalkboard that she could not find any logic. While she considered entering the real estate industry, she knew that she could not in good conscience help people to buy a home if she would not buy one herself.
In 2009, Andi’s family jumped at the opportunity to move back to Oregon. She had come to love Portland and missed the city and the people in it. They were able to buy their own home two years later; when they were getting their keys, their agent, Rex Buchanan said to them in an uncharacteristically serious tone, “If you decide to go into real estate, I’d love to have you on my team.” Andi laughed it off, but noticed she could not stop looking at houses, and could not get the chalkboard out of my mind.
Finally, Gary Boyer from NW Mortgage Group turned to her at a charity function and said, “Honey, you’re either going to have to join us, or put down the house porn.” Andi had my license by August, and that was 8 years ago. She is so grateful to help buyers, sellers, and, now agents, to make strong choices they can be confident in. As a third-generation agent, real estate runs in my veins. She learned how to define what success meant for her, cutting out the noise from all of the people who wanted to mold her to their ideal image, finding happiness in her career and her personal life. Now Andi wants to do the same for you.
