Growing up with a mom as a Realtor taught me a lot of amazing life lessons. Looking back at all the hard work that she put in makes me so grateful. Learning how to treat people with love. Learning how to educate so that people can make informed decisions. Learning from her how to be a professional. Learning attention to detail and a strong work ethic. The number of times that I heard her say things like “That is confidential”, or times we took the loooong way home to look at houses are too many for me to count:) The gratitude I have for this amazing woman fills my heart with love. There were times when I was younger that I was frustrated about the work-life balance that being a Realtor sometimes brings. It can be lopsided at times (sometimes good sometimes bad). But I can assure you that Lee LaVallee was doing the best with what she had and it was an amazing job:) Love you, mom! Thank you for always being my “Phone a friend” for all my NC brokerage questions. Thank you for teaching me how to be a successful professional in real estate and in life.
Shameless plug – If you have or know of anyone who has real estate needs in NC LaVallee Properties is the best around:)
For my personal real estate background, I started with Lavallee Properties from birth:) But I got my real estate Brokers License in 2005 in NC and started officially at Lavallee Properties. From there I moved to Florida where I got my license in 2006 and worked at Keller Williams of the Treasure Coast. Keller Williams had amazing training and I made some life long connections there. Then we experienced the real estate crash.
After that, I started another career full time. I was a General Manager for HHGregg and moved around opening new stores in new markets for them. Responsible for hiring and training sales associates, operations, and ultimately responsible for the revenue of the store (avg 1.5MM a month). The whole time I worked at HH I kept learning about real estate. I even took the Rich Dad Poor Dad Elite Investor training course after reading Robert Kiyosaki's book. Working side by side with a super successful investor, we analyzed hundreds of properties to look at how they would cash flow. After taking the course and leaving HHGregg I moved to AZ. I waited to get my license here because of what I learned in the course and thinking that I would become a real estate investor, not an agent here.
Then I started my career with Opendoor. Helping to build Opendoor from the ground up was an amazing experience. The sheer volume of transactions that I was involved with was like drinking from a fire hose. The lessons that I learned there, the super-smart real estate professionals that I got to work with was super valuable for my career. While I was there I was involved in a few different roles and ended up getting licensed here in AZ and in Nevada as well.
Watching Opendoor grow from about a hundred employees when I started to almost two thousand was amazing growth. I was able to help them purchase almost 1,000 properties in my role in Acquisitions. I was the number one agent in a couple of the markets I was in, selling over 1,300 homes. The use of teams and technology at Opendoor makes them a machine that will continue to build and grow for the foreseeable future. I am still a huge fan. In fact, part of my business model is educating sellers and buyers on ALL the options that are available. Working with Opendoor also introduced me to several Institutional investors. I would represent them in purchases of homes that Opendoor would not be able to buy. This allows me now as an agent to bring a wealth of knowledge to the table that is unmatched.
