On the level: Tommy Williams will never forget the day he jumped into real estate

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Tommy Williams was a construction materials salesman before he made the switch into selling real estate.

His first day on the job: Sept. 11, 2001.  It was a tough time to be a real estate agent; the terrorist attacks of that day caused the real estate market to begin stalling.

Since then, Williams, a real estate agent with Charlotte-based Weichert 
Realtors-Rebhan & Associates, has 
become a multimillion-dollar producer with a focus on relocation clients.

A dog lover, he has pledged to donate a portion of his commissions this year to the Humane Society of Charlotte.

What was it like starting your real estate career on Sept. 11? Right after Sept. 11, it was pretty slow. Charlotte is a trickle-down market. The rest of the country really started to boom in ‘02, but it really didn’t hit Charlotte until ‘03. 
Really, in hindsight, it was a good thing because you don’t necessarily want to 
get thrown into the fire.

It gave me a lot of time to follow some people who knew what they were doing and learn from those people. One of the misnomers in real estate is new people will jump in and be told by potential 
employers that you need a good three- 
to six-month cushion to get your feet wet. I’m here to tell you it’s 18 months, unless you know a bunch of millionaires. But if you can survive that long, as I was able to, it has turned out to be a very good 
career move.

Is now a good time for someone to go into real estate? It’s the right time for anybody. A down market is a fabulous time to learn. You don’t learn anything when the market is up. All you do is fill out paperwork as fast as you possibly can. It’s a fabulous time to get in if you have the stomach to survive the next 18 months — and a cash reserve.

Maybe longer than 18 months? I’m seeing good things happening in the price point that we’ve really been struggling in for the last couple of years: $300,000, $400,000, $500,000, $600,000. Those are moving again and they are moving quickly.

If you have a $400,000 house, and you price it at $400,000, it’s not going to move. But if you have the ability to price it at $375,000 or $360,000 or $350,000, it’s gone in a day.

I saw it last week with a young couple I was working with. We looked at eight houses last week and three of them were under contract by the time we finished looking because the people priced them right. The ones that were priced wrong had been sitting there for hundreds and hundreds of days.

Do you find that you are the bearer of bad news in this market? I never consider myself the bearer of bad news. I consider myself the bearer of real news. I’m not an optimist or pessimist. I’m a realist. I’m extremely a straight shooter.

We do a lot of corporate relocation business, and we’ll do a listing presentation where we have at least two, sometimes three, Realtors go in and do a presentation. Invariably, I’m always the guy that’s significantly different than one of those other people. Problem is, once one agent goes in and tells the seller, “Oh, it’s definitely worth $425,000,” and I’ve already told them it’s worth $375,000, they’re going to list their house with that other person. But it’s not going to sell, nine times out of 10.

As a New England Patriots fan, did you make any special arrangements with your clients before the Super Bowl? I told my clients that on Sunday afternoon they were shut off. I’m from New England and I was a season ticket holder. My dad and I went every week. I left Boston in 1987 to go to school, and we got rid of the tickets.

TARA RAMSEY can be reached at [email protected].

Tommy Williams

Lives in: Canterbury

Age: 42

Family: wife, Laura; 
children, J.D., 8

Education: bachelor’s in economics, Wake Forest 
University in Winston-Salem