Barbie, Horses, and Real Estate Commissions

Did you lose interest when you found out I was not writing about real estate?

As always, a huge welcome to my new readers and a welcome back hug to those of you who have been with me on this journey for a while. I offer an essay rather than an episode of memoir this week, as I do occasionally when something is rolling around incessantly in my thoughts. If you found your way here and are not yet a “subscriber” - meaning someone who gets the latest installment weekly via email - feel free to enter your email address below. It costs nothing to subscribe.

Also feel free to hit the heart button if you like what you read - it likewise costs nothing. Comments, criticisms, shares are also welcome.

Maybe Ken would be interested in my writing, since lately it has been about horses.

As of the last time I checked my Substack dashboard, 268 of my subscribers found their way here through the recommendation on Matthew Ferreraʻs Substack Always Inspiring. Add to that those of you who are my colleagues and that means a bunch of you have spent at least as much time as I have this week thinking and talking about commissions, the National Association of Realtors settlement¹, and what comes next. I worry that even though for some reason Matthew likes what I write, the rest of you lost interest when you found out that currently itʻs about horses, not real estate, to paraphrase Just Ken.

The funny thing is, my reaction to any potentially disruptive news, any breakdown in the flow of my expectations and habits and assumptions, is to turn to the lessons I learned in the years I am writing about in this memoir-plus-essay alternative to my other writing - the 550+ blog posts on the Hawaiʻi Life website that ARE about real estate. (Feel free to go subscribe to that instead if it would be more valuable to you.)

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Like Barbie, perhaps many in the real estate industry are having an existential crisis moment

I came reluctantly to the Barbie movie. (Someone should have told me there was a subplot about horses!) I do not at the moment have any young girls in my home and I did not understand that the movie was also meant for formerly young girls with decades of experience leaving Barbie Land for the Real World. In Barbie Land all the Barbies have the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood located near the perfect beach filled with perfect Kens. The Barbies have all the cool jobs, and believe that thanks to them, so do all the women in the Real World.

Then it all breaks down. A crack appears between the worlds. Barbie and Ken will have to make a journey that leads to new understandings. They have to cope with what they learn and find a new status quo. Breakdowns are inevitable. Whether yours is about patriarchy or real estate commissions or something else, a journey has to be undertaken, preferably in the company of a few devoted friends.

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For the purposes of illustration, letʻs make it about real estate commissions. For more than a century, real estate agents have been paid, as are many salespeople, on commission. You get the sale, you get paid.

In the Real World, many times you donʻt get paid. You work hard with a prospective buyer who looks for years but never pulls the trigger; you donʻt get paid. You reluctantly take an overpriced listing and when it does not sell the frustrated seller hires a new agent, lowers the price to what you originally recommended and the second (ok, usually the third) agent gets the commission. You give up a large portion of your commission to help hold a deal together for a first time homebuyer family - a feel good deal even if the hours you put in worked out to less than minimum wage.

But the bright public face we put on our social media accounts implies that we live in Barbie Land. I always find you the perfect home. It is super simple. I just show you three houses and you make an offer. I know that to be true because I have been in three episodes of the Hawaiʻi Life show on HGTV. In those episodes I show properties in charming, always sunny neighborhoods near the beautiful beaches of the Kohala Coast, and the clients reliably decide one of the three I show them is perfect. Although I am really bad at social media, if you were to believe my Instagram stories, I wake up every day with a smile on my face, Manaola or Sig Zane outfit on my body, ready to sell you a home with yellow hibiscus blooming in the yard and killer ocean views. My social media also proves I am a good person, attending a ton of charity events and affordable housing meetings, not to mention my passion for conservation.

But in the real world I have reason to be secretly ashamed, “real estate agents are one of the most hated jobs in the world. It is just something about real estate agents that makes them hard to trust.” That “something” is probably that we get paid on commission and the public believes we only care about the commission and anyway we get paid too much for the work we do. Which explains why the press coverage of the settlement erroneously makes it sound as though the entire structure of paying commissions for real estate sales is about to break down. As one of my clients joked in a text “I thought the settlement had all realtors working for free.”

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Let me go back to how I opened this essay: The funny thing is, my reaction to any potentially disruptive news, any breakdown in the flow of my expectations and habits and assumptions, is to turn to the lessons I learned in the years I am writing about in this memoir-plus-essay alternative to my other writing…

My friend Matthew Ferrara is writing some solid, practical advice that basically says to double down on best professional practices and talk with your coaches and mentors if you need help. Heʻs right about that. And here is what I would add: dealing with the inevitable breakdowns in our lives, the moments when cracks appear between the accepted perception of how things are and the reality of how things are, that requires a set of embodied skills. You canʻt only think and talk your way through this. You might have to go holoholo as we say here in Hawaiʻi, exploring in a pink Corvette, or on a speedboat, or riding side saddle on a rocket. Maybe you will have to pedal with friends on a tandem bicycle or learn to skate to get there. But you will get there and back if you commit to the journey.

Along the way you will learn more about how things work. More importantly, through this exploration you will learn about yourself. Both parts are essential for you to declare how you will live in the new version of your reality. Not just declare your commitment with your words, but actually feel it deep in your core.

Now is the perfect time to consider who you really are, your practices, the value you bring to your clients, and why you are committed to this profession. And then embody your new declaration about what you do, why you do it, and for whom you do it.

When I occasionally offer free sessions of Equine Guided Education, dozens of people put their hands up to experience an hour getting feedback from my horses. They do it because they have a specific situation, or sometimes just a vague sense, that is calling for a journey to a new version of themselves. Breaks between old and new realities can be unsought and bring up negative emotions; but sometimes they are theoretically positive changes (promotion, new love) that still create the stress of needing to develop our skills or heal old hurts.

Some of these equine-guided (EGE) sessions serve simply to bring a bit of insight and healing. But there comes a moment when I might ask my EGE client to make a declaration about their future, and see whether the horse believes it. Horses require you to be authentic. They insist that you feel what you are feeling, that your words match your energy and body language. If you are not clear, clear at a deep level, about your commitments and your worth, the horse wonʻt be interested in your declaration. If you donʻt embody your commitments and your worth, the horse will not trust or follow your leadership or guidance.

And neither will the sellers or buyers with whom you will be having conversations about commissions and the work you do to earn them, conversations that, to be honest, perhaps you/we should have been having all along in the Real World.

Your happily ever after might not look like your happily before, but thatʻs life, Barbie and horses for you.

Come back next week for more on how Zara and I moved forward after my initial failure with her and the saddle. You might be surprised how relevant it seems.

1. For those of my readers not familiar with the NAR settlement, here is the press release.