by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
As a little girl, Glenda Marchbanks’ dream was to be a doctor. But, three children and a taste of the real estate bug changed her course.
This career path has worked out well for Marchbanks, a consistent top producer in real estate sales.
So, how does one still continue to be a top producer after 23 years in the business?
“Everyone says ‘You don’t have to work hard, you only have to work smart.’ That’s not true - you do have to work hard,” said Marchbanks, who has been with ERA John Gray Realty in Orange Park for 13 years. “You have to put in the hours. That’s what I like about real estate. The more hours you put in, the more money you make. Whereas if you are in a 9-to-5 job you always make the same amount of money no matter how hard you work. Not that it’s all about money.”
Marchbanks said you also have to work smart by choosing your priorities.
“Your time is very important,” she said. “You have to use your time wisely and prioritize. That is the key to being a top producer.”
Of her 23 years, all of them have been in the Orange Park area so she has seen the area grow and change dramatically.
“Our prices are escalating,” she said. “They are going up, up and up. We are developing every area of Clay County and Orange Park. I see the rural areas are going away. That’s good and bad. We see all these people coming in, which is good for our business and the rural areas going away. We wonder if the infrastructure is going to be able to support all the new development.”
Over the past 23 years, she says things have changed and people have changed.
“When we were doing real estate, the technology wasn’t there when I first started,” she said. “A fax machine was a new thing and it was wonderful. We thought that was the best thing that could ever happen and now we are in a fast traveling technology world and we have to keep up. Those of us who are older, it doesn’t come as easy, but somehow we manage.”
Marchbanks said that the consumer still needs them, but in a different way.
“We have to be the best nowadays,” she said. “The competition is out there and the Internet is giving them information that we used to give them. They used to be dependent upon us for their information, now it’s on the Web.”
Marchbanks said that one good thing for the older, more experienced Realtors is that they get a lot of repeat business.
“Right now, that is my bread and butter,” she said.
Some changes in the real estate business have also hurt Realtors, including the no-call list and discount Realtors.
“The no-call list was a real injury to listing agents,” she said. “I had a major base of listings and the no-call list has hurt me. I’ve had to learn a different way to do things. I have to do more mailings and knocking on doors and that sort of thing, which is slower than picking up the telephone.
“Also, there is the competition with the discount Realtors and what I call wanna-be Realtors who just throw the listing in the Multiple Listing Service and then think they have no more responsibility.
“Some of them are not even Realtors. They just collect a fee to put the listing in MLS for the owner. If we sell it, we do both sides of the transaction. We’d rather play on a level playing field.”
Over the years, Marchbanks has had some rather interesting and some scary customers.
One was a well-dressed respectable man and his parents who put a very large down payment on a nice home in a very nice area.
“I turned on the television one morning and there was the house with police tape around it,” she said. “They had arrested the man because he had murdered his parents and put them in a dumpster and I had showed him property!”
Prior to ERA John Gray Realty, she owned her own company, United Realty, for three years.
“I had brokered the Palmer Realty for so long and I got a partner so we decided to open our own company,” she said. “We did real well, but then my partner decided they didn’t want to do the number crunching anymore and I don’t enjoy that. I always said if I ever left that company, I’d work for John Gray, so here I am.”
Marchbanks has chosen to focus a lot of her business on first-time homebuyers.
“I enjoy doing them, but it’s a challenge because they have no money,” she said. “I think because of my roots, I understand that. They have no money and they want a house. We are able to put them in a house with absolutely not one penny with all the new programs today. They are so thrilled to get their houses. I also do the other end of the spectrum, which keeps me alive and well.”
Prior to opening her own company, she was the broker of ERA Palmer Realty and an agent at ERA Tiffin and Owens, where she started her real estate career in 1989.
“I was in kind of a dead-end type job,” said Marchbanks. “I loved my job as a monitor technician in the hospital on the heart floor, but I was making as much as I could ever make there. So, I decided to get into real estate.
“I still worked at the hospital for five years at night while selling real estate during the day. I worked two full-time jobs because I had small children at home and needed insurance.”
When she got into real estate, even though she had made a 97 on her test, the real world was a tad different. She said she learned a lot more from hands-on experience she gained after joining her first company.
“My first day at work at a real estate office, the broker told me I was on floor duty,” she said. “I asked ‘What is floor duty?’ He told me, ‘Here are the files. If someone calls, help them out.’ I said OK. It was good for me, because I learned to dig for information. If I had a mortgage question, he told me to call a mortgage company. What I didn’t realize was that he was teaching me to find out these things on my own and that was good for me.”
Marchbanks also said one reason she stuck with the ERA franchises was because they provide a lot of training. Usually, brokers are too busy to train, so ERA has its own training available for new and experienced agents.
Prior to being a monitor technician, she was a director of a daycare and a paste-up artist at a newspaper.
“All that time, I went to school to get my college degree to become a nurse, but when I started doing so well in real estate, I decided to keep doing it,” said Marchbanks. “I have three years completed, just short of a nursing degree. One day I may go back and get it, if I’m not too busy.”
Marchbanks lives in The Ravines in Middleburg. When she is not working, she enjoys spending time with her three children and two grandchildren. “I would be a professional grandmother if I could,” she joked.