Graphic by Dani Ramirez
By Dennise Arriaza
When in search of a forever home, one might hire a realtor for help in searching for the right home. A realtor can assist in the process of selling your home or helping you find a new home to rent or purchase. It is not only houses that can be sold, but also other buildings for business, which are also managed and sold by realtors. Real estate is defined as property that consists of land and buildings. An example of real estate property is the McDonald’s franchises, with all the same buildings operated in the same way but in different locations. As a student here at CI, I chose to major in business due to my interest in real estate. To gather more information on the real estate journey, I had the opportunity to interview Guillermo Gutierrez, a real estate agent, who spoke to me about how he started and his experiences throughout his career. Throughout my interview, I was able to ask more direct and detailed questions about a real estate career and what the requirements are.
Gutierrez spoke about how he received his license after transferring to California State University Northridge, where he studied emerging media. He got into real estate because of his family, since his dad had been a real estate broker for over 30 years. When asked what kind of experience is needed, Guiterrez said, “You do not even need to have a real estate license to be able to learn the industry and to be able to recognize opportunities and to be able to learn to communicate with people.” It was valuable to hear this since college is a place where people can network and meet new people who can connect them to jobs or organizations of their desired interest.
One of the benefits he mentioned was flexibility and his reason for choosing this path, “Just the fact that I cannot only work for myself but for my family and the people I care about, that is a really big motivating and driving factor that gets me to put more even more work in every single day in a day out.” Its exciting to hear more about a field of work more directly and get a better understanding of what some of the skills required. For me personally its important to network because you never know where your next opportunity can come. It is good to keep an open mind because it allows you to meet all kinds of people. I believe it is also important to keep in mind other people skills, because we can all always learn something new from others. As someone who is fluent in Spanish, I feel blessed to be able to broaden my connections with others since it gives me the opportunity to meet more people.
Most of Gutierrez’s clients tend to be the Spanish speaking community and he described that often, they have a completely different idea of how real estate works because more often than not, they are either first generation or second generation immigrants that were never taught. He advises, “If you eventually want to become a homeowner, … start to have something that can provide a foundation not only for yourself, but for future generations of your family, like your kids, your grandkids even.” As someone who is fluent in Spanish, I feel blessed to be able to broaden my connections with others since it gives me the opportunity to meet more people. As can be seen during these times following ICE raids, a lot of our spanish speaking community has faced adversity during these times. Some of my goals professionally and as a person is to help be a voice for people in my community, and remind people that they are not alone in any struggle.
As I concluded my interview, some piece of advice that Gutierrez provided was, “Definitely work on getting your license, it’s not super hard. It’ll definitely take some time, but if anything, it’s easier now just because [of] … technological advances.” This advice is very impactful to someone like me aiming to get their license soon. It was also great to hear how real estate agents like Guiterrez, “prefer to build relationships as opposed to transaction.” This makes me see this career from a different perspective and be able to see that it is more than a money making career but a career aimed at building numerous relationships with others.
