Welcome to episode 5 of Tumors to Lake Martin with Amy B. Cotney.

So this is a podcast where I am just talking in my drive time between the lake and Auburn, Alabama. I work in both markets pretty much evenly, so I’m in the car a lot.

I’m heading back to Auburn right now, but then I’ll have to be back at the lake. I usually would stay tonight, but I don’t have my dogs with me, so I’m heading home back to Auburn.

So let’s talk about the day in the life of a real estate agent today, or mine. What day? Is today Monday? Today is Monday.

I woke up really early, which is my normal process, but I’m trying to think if it was 5:30. So I turned my phone off no later than 8 o’clock. It goes in silent mode. I can’t handle it anymore. Like I feel like all I do, la la la la la, on the phone and everything else. So at 8 o’clock.

So when I turned my phone back on at 5 o’clock this morning, it was like bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. I was like, oh my God, what now? And it was like my transaction coordinator. She’s like, well, you’ve got—have a good Monday. Read your email. I was like, oh my God. Here we go. You have spot cleaner? And sure enough, money and all that. Oh. Full of crap. I didn’t want to deal with it on a Monday morning, but I got to. That’s the lovely part about real estate. It doesn’t end right now. That’s part of it.

That’s exactly 12 hours ago, and I’m still going strong.

And then what happened? What happened? So usually in a day in the life, I tend to answer all my emails and texts and everything from 5 in the morning until about 8. And then—

By God, if this is the last thing I do, I take one hour of Amy time, and that’s at between 8:30 and 9:30, and I go to yoga. I have to have my yoga. It is very grounding. I go to the yoga room in Auburn, Alabama, and I love my yoga. And I love hot yoga, and that’s why I go there. I like yoga at 93. Now there are different classes, but the one I like is 93 degrees.

So I do take that, but real estate takes up the majority of my day, and it’s much more than what anybody really thinks it is. It’s putting out a lot of fires. It could be, it could be anything. Yesterday I was like managing pictures, like, uh, you know, what time is my photographer gonna be here? What time is it gonna be there? Let me pay for my photographer.

With real estate, so we don’t fill out any um seller’s disclosures, so um you have to get an inspection, I mean, pretty much. If you don’t get an inspection, it’s because maybe you’re in a multiple offer and and and you want the house so bad and you’re like, I don’t care what’s wrong with it, I’m not gonna get an inspection, and you do that just to get the house. I hope that made sense. I’m talking very fast.

So that would be the only reason why you do not get an inspection, but, so I had two inspections today. I don’t go. My broker is like, nope, you’re not allowed to go because if I were to, like, say something like, oh, I think that you, the roof looks fine. It looks fine. And then the roof, you know, starts leaking in six months, you know, I could be held liable. So I just don’t go to, go to the um inspections that all I’m not allowed to and um that’s the brokerage rule.

And um then I get the inspections back, probably tonight. And so then I’ll go over them in the morning when I wake up, figure out what we need to negotiate. So there’s so many different negotiations. It’s negotiating repairs, negotiating um pricing, obviously. Anything and everything, we are negotiating. I’ve even tried to negotiate a cap one time, you know?

So having said that, it was a very full day. I’m trying to think of what else happened because I was, it’s been a little crazy today in real estate world. I gave you no. My CPA, I don’t remember what all.

Oh, I, I got a key stuck in a lock, which I’m gonna have to go get Kurt to fix that. That was a big bad mess, but maybe I need some WD40 on that lock. I’m not really sure, but I can’t get into the house now because it won’t turn. So yeah, it’s, it’s a lot.

And um we’re, we’re starting to pick up. What is it? February 2nd today and the market is starting to really pick up, especially at the lake. I’m showing a little bit more at Lake Martin than Auburn right now. This next weekend, I have full Saturday and Sunday showings in Auburn, Alabama, and I’m excited about that. I have some clients coming in from Indiana, and then I have one coming in from Texas. So a lot of out-of-towners moving to Auburn.

So busy, busy time about to pick up on it on the weekends.

I would also say this too while I’m on it and talking about it. Everybody says, well, I don’t want to bother you on the weekend. Y’all, if you live for the weekend as a realtor, you are broken. Like, that doesn’t work. That’s our busiest time of the whole entire week is the weekends. That’s when people can look at houses is on the weekends. So don’t ever—don’t feel like you’re—that’s when we work.

And lenders too. Like, I can pick up the phone and get a pre-approval on the weekends because my lenders work on the weekends as well. So don’t ever be afraid to call your realtor on the weekend, or especially if your realtor is me.

On that note, I am going to go drink some water.