by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
Who needs a personal assistant?
Probably every real estate agent, say those who have one. It’s just matter of making the commitment.
Judy Hicks of Re/Max Coastal Real Estate has had her personal assistant, Denise Peligian, for six years.
“I don’t like paperwork,” said Hicks. “I have desks that I can’t work at because I have paperwork piled on it. What I needed was someone to make sure that everything got done. When you sell a house, it’s not just what I have to do, but what the other Realtor has to do, what the home inspector has to do and what everyone else has to do.
“I wanted to make sure everything got done. I realized that I really needed someone to handle the details and make sure that everything is being done when it is supposed to. If I’m not in front of someone when I am listing or selling a house, then I’m not doing what I want to do.”
Having a personal assistant allows Realtors to focus more doing what they love in real estate.
“I want to network, meet other people, go to luncheons and do charity work,” said Hicks. “I don’t want to push paper.”
Hicks said she found her assistant through her friend Mary Capo.
“Mary did my newsletter and she knew Denise from church,” said Hicks. “I had just moved over to Re/Max and saw an immediate increase in my business. I was very busy showing properties and selling my own listings. I realized I wanted someone who is very flexible and who wasn’t going to be in the room with me. I don’t work well with someone sitting beside me. I needed someone who didn’t want to work in an office.”
Hicks pays her assistant $10 an hour and provides her Internet connection, printer, toner and paper so she can work from home.
“I just wanted her to be honest, diligent and hardworking,” said Hicks. “I’ve described her as my watchdog. Nothing gets past her. I get more compliments on her than I do on me. She is very thorough. She is very classy and doesn’t let anyone BS her.”
Even though she has a personal assistant, the personal touch is very important to Hicks. She still takes care of all of her customer’s calls and leaves the paperwork and contact with all those involved in the transaction including home inspectors, loan officers and others to Piligian.
Sometimes instead of just pushing paper, personal assistants are hired to help with real estate related tasks like showing houses or handling marketing.
“We hired a personal assistant to mainly assist us with our marketing,” said Selby Kaiser of Prudential Network Realty who works as a team with her sister Linda McMorrow. “She creates our property brochures, places and tracks all advertising, monitors our Web sites, calls for feedback from other agent, generates regular reports to our clients and generally keeps us on track. She can and will show property for us, meet appraisers and open houses when needed because she is licensed.”
Kaiser and McMorrow’s personal assistant, Darlene Wright, is licensed. They sent her to real estate school and pay her membership to the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors.
“It is important to us and to her future in the business that she be a Realtor,” said Kaiser.
Hicks said she didn’t need her personal assistant to have real estate experience or to be licensed. She just needed someone to push paper.
“I think what happens in the business is an agent will hire a personal assistant,” said Hicks. “They will all of a sudden want to be a Realtor, and then they lose their personal assistant. Denise has never wanted to be a Realtor. She likes what she does. She also freelances and does marketing for other agents on the side.”
Kaiser and McMorrow found their personal assistant when she worked at the corporate office of Prudential Network Realty.
“She wanted to work fewer hours when her daughter was born,” said Kaiser. “We are very happy to have someone of her experience and skill level.”
According to Kaiser, salary range for assistants in general is in the $9-15 per hour range, depending upon experience and skills.
“Technical skills are critical for us,” said Kaiser, “However, it depends upon what an agent wants an assistant to do.”
Wright works 30 hours a week, some from home. Kaiser and McMorrow have worked it out so she is able to work at home in case her daughter becomes ill. Other than that, she is generally in the office 22 hours a week.
When they were searching for a personal assistant, they looked for someone who would complement their business.
“We looked for someone who has great customer service skills since she often communicates with the clients, someone who has great attention to detail, someone who has good computer skills and is willing to learn new programs, someone who is creative, someone who is very organized and works independently and most important, someone who is flexible and willing to change direction at a moment’s notice,” said Kaiser.
“Our assistant has all these skills and then some! She is like a member of the family, and we have a wonderful business and personal relationship. She is a valued member of our team who contributes every day to our success.”
Some Realtors say that having a personal assistant really gave them their life back.
“I can come home at night, have my glass of wine and relax,” said Hicks. “We communicate almost exclusively through e-mail. We see each other maybe once a month.”
Usually, they will meet up at a restaurant or her office and spend hours discussing business.
“We like to meet at the Rib Shack, Ruby Tuesday’s or Chili’s to discuss what is going on,” said Hicks. “When they see us coming, they know we will be there two hours. They keep the Diet Cokes coming.”
When Hicks hired Piligian, she told her to work fulltime, but whatever hours she wanted.
“I told her: I don’t care when you do it, or how you do it, I just want you to do it,” said Hicks.
Hicks said Piligian likes to work odd hours and is a self-confessed night owl.
“I’ll receive e-mails from her at 2 a.m. when I am sleeping,” said Hicks.
Hicks said the advice she got when looking for an assistant is to hire someone who is the complete opposite of her, so that is what she did.
“She likes the details,” said Hicks. “She gets all excited when she has to do something and I’m like, don’t even tell me about it. I knew I had to hire someone different than me.”
Recently, Hicks went on vacation and Piligian handled her cell phone, which reinforced her decision to stay where she is and not ever get into real estate.
“When she got back, I handed her cell phone back to her and said, ‘I have no desire to be a Realtor’,” said Piligian. “I went into this without any real estate experience. I didn’t need real estate experience. I think to be someone’s assistant, you just need to have a strong administrative background, a desire to push paper and organize things. I know a lot more now, but still do not want to be a Realtor.”
Since Piligian is not licensed, she cannot show property, but she can open the door for a client or go to a closing in Hick’s place.
“What I do is three-fold,” said Hicks. “I do listings, sales and marketing. She does all my marketing, my newsletter, fliers, all my mailouts, puts listings on websites and calls for feedback on a property. I don’t care whose job it is, if somebody is not doing what they are supposed to do, she does it. She makes sure it is done. We have had transactions where she has done the work for both Realtors.”
Even though Wright is licensed, she is happy in her position.
“Working for Selby and Linda is a dream job,” said Wright. “Even though it is a very busy position, it affords me the time I need to devote to my family. When you love the people you work with, it’s easy to love your job. And I do love my job!”
Susan Kennedy of Vanguard Realty/GMAC Real Estate has a personal assistant named Debbie Wirz.
“She is a Godsend to me,” said Kennedy. “When an agent gets really busy and spends a lot of time out of the office showing property or in meetings, it is just very important to have someone that can handle phone calls and emails that come into the office.”
Kennedy said that if she is out of the office for an extended amount of time, she would probably have 25 phone calls to return when she came back.
”My personal assistant can normally answer those calls or look up the information they need and when I get to the office I may have only three or four that I need to handle personally,” said Kennedy.
Unlike Kaiser and McMorrow’s assistant, Wirz is not licensed.
“She processes all the files for the office for me and my licensed assistants,” said Kennedy. “I found Debbie through one of my other employees. She started out part-time and of course now is full-time and has been with me for about five years.
“A good personal assistant is worth their weight in gold. If you pay them well they will stay with you. Debbie works on salary and works between 40-50 hours a week. I want a personal assistant that I can trust and that is a caring person that truly cares about my customers the same way that I do. Debbie works in the office and is not interested in becoming a Realtor. I believe Debbie is a very dedicated person that I trust completely to handle assisting me.”