Selina Galanis

Get your financing conversation done before you fall in love with a house. Not a pre-qualification you got off a website, but a real conversation with a lender who has pulled your credit and looked at your documents. In thirty years I have watched more good buyers lose homes over a weak pre-approval letter than over price. After that, get clear on what you actually need versus what you have been told to want. Commute, schools, lot size, resale in seven years. Write it down and rank it. The market moves fast enough that you do not want to be figuring out your priorities while a seller is waiting on your answer. And find an agent who will tell you when a house is a bad idea. Anyone can open a door. You are hiring someone for their judgment.

Price it right the first time. You get one shot at the first two weeks, and that is when the buyers who have been watching your neighborhood and are ready to move will see it. Overprice it and you spend those two weeks as the house everyone uses to justify buying something else, then chase the market down anyway. Second, spend your money on condition before you spend it on marketing. Paint, decluttering, and the repairs a buyer's inspector is going to find regardless. Buyers are not negotiating your list price, they are negotiating what they think it will cost them to fix what you left. And ask any agent you interview what they think your home will actually sell for and why. The highest number is not the best answer. The one backed by comparable sales and a plan is.

Thirty years in this business means I have sat on both sides of most transactions. I've been licensed and helped buyers and sellers in Florida, Georgia, New York and Connecticut and now Houston. First-time buyers navigating their first contract. Move-up families looking for more space. Sellers with real equity trying to time a move without carrying two mortgages. I have closed VA transactions where the appraisal and repair requirements needed someone who had done it before, and I have handled properties well into seven figures where discretion and preparation mattered more than exposure. I have also done valuation work on distressed and bank-owned property, which taught me more about what a house is actually worth than any listing appointment ever did. The thread through all of it is that I run the transactions rather than react to them. Most problems in a closing are visible weeks before they become problems.

My first transaction after moving to Houston and getting licensed here was for my son, his wife and my beautiful granddaughter. Thirty years in this business and I had never been on that side of it. I will be honest about what that did to me. It did not make me softer. It made me relentless. When it is your own family sleeping in the house, every line of the inspection report reads differently, and every dollar of the negotiation is a dollar that stays with your grandchild instead of a stranger. I went through that contract the way I would want someone to go through it for me. We got them the right house at a price I felt good about defending. What I took from it is the standard I use now. If I would not let my son sign it, I do not let a client sign it.

A hurricane put me in this business. In 1996 I was waiting tables while attending college in Florida and the restaurant I worked at was destroyed. My best friend's father owned a real estate and property management company, and he gave me a job. I have not left the industry since. What came after was thirty years of seeing real estate from almost every angle. Property management first. Then REIT work, then corporate and commercial real estate for AT&T and Verizon, then franchise real estate covering a seven state territory. Eventually residential, where I have led large teams for other people, including the top team in Westchester County, New York. Along the way I became a Master Real Estate Coach, which I still do. I had a mentor at AT&T in Georgia who told me there was no ceiling on what I could do. I believed her, and it changed the trajectory of my career. I am back in personal sales now because this is the largest transaction most people will ever make, and I think they deserve someone who has seen it from every side of the table.

Most of my education in this business did not come from a classroom, it came from doing the work in settings where the standards were higher than residential requires. I spent years in corporate and commercial real estate for AT&T and Verizon, and in franchise real estate managing a seven-state territory. Corporate real estate teaches you to negotiate against professionals who do this every day, with documentation and analysis to back every position. That training does not switch off when the transaction is someone's home. I am also trained in property valuation and have done broker price opinions on distressed and bank-owned property. That means when I tell you what your home is worth, or what you should offer on one, it is an analysis rather than an opinion. On the certification side, I am a Master Coach, so I train other agents on systems and client service. Teaching this work to other professionals keeps me sharper at it than I would be otherwise.