The Backbone Of Real Estate? Only The Men In the Business Know The Answer

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

On a warm San Diego day in mid-June of 1969 I drove home from my last day of high school. About 60 days later I turned 18. Around 30 days after that I was jumping up and down in front of our mailbox, holding the notice from the California Department of Real Estate informing me I’d passed the salesman’s license test. A few weeks later I was proudly putting a knot in my tie, bright and early Saturday morning, the 18th of October. I had a full head of blonde hair, and was shaving more days of the week than not. 🙂 I was minutes away from driving to the office for the first time ever.

I was still living at home, and going to college full time. 1969 was a recession year, but I didn’t know it. I went full time in February 1974 — the beginning of the ’74-75 recession, and was married a month later. Seems I had great timing from day one. 🙂 Times were tough. San Diego hadn’t had their first real price run-up yet. Interest rates, to the best of my memory were generally in the mid-7’s to 8%.

I remember like it was yesterday, sitting in the office of H & R Block, sometime before the income tax filing deadline, (Big time, wasn’t I?) and the woman doing our taxes looked up at me, my wife looking on, and said, “Mr. Brown, you’d have been better off not having worked last year.” Ouch. To her everlasting credit, my wife looked her in the eye and asked why she was working part time, at night. Was it possibly because her husband wasn’t cuttin’ it? We’ve not been married for a decade now, but we still chuckle about that night. Even with the kidney shot to my ego that night, it was way cool to know she had my back.

1975 wasn’t much of an improvement, as I made more money, but only because I was getting the hang of things. We were still mired in the recession. I remember one guy in my farm area said he’d love to list his home with me, and move to a better part of the county. “But Jeff, my payments would be $300 a month. Who can afford that? I can’t.” And he was right.

To make a long story short, 1976 came in with the roar of a V-12 roadster in a hurry. I made over $20,000 and thought I was King of all that was real estate. I still hadn’t sold a million bucks in volume. 🙂 We used a real full time accountant to do our taxes that year. To put this into perspective, the rent for our one bedroom apartment was about $125 a month. The house we bought the following year, using FHA financing, had payments of $580 including taxes and insurance.

All that time, my wife was working 40-45 hours a week at the bank. Every Friday she deposited her paycheck — and we paid our bills.

It was then I came home one night, and told her if one more woman told me the color in the kitchen was wrong, I was gonna be on the 11 o’clock news. I had to do something else. Something with a much larger dose of objectivity. She was ecstatic, as she’d been telling me for some time, that she knew I wasn’t happy. We decided I’d get my broker’s license, switch to investment properties, and make the big money.

Ever take a look back to when you were in your 20’s? It was only my ignorance of reality, that saved me. I thought I had a few years of full time experience, and could easily translate that into the investment side of the business. Not only that, but given the higher prices of investment properties, I’d be rich. 🙂 The arrogance of youth is so obvious to us as we grow older and wiser. It’s a good thing blogs didn’t exist back then, because the arrogant and mostly misplaced confidence I had in my skills and general intelligence would have embarrassed me within an inch of my life. I wish I was half as smart today as I thought I was back then. 🙂

Because I made the switch to investments, I pretty much missed out on all the money I might’ve made. This was, of course, because I could barely spell investment real estate, and therefore wasn’t able to capitalize on the amazing opportunities of the times. More evidence of great timing.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my wife was depositing her paychecks every Friday like clockwork. This afforded me the luxury of paying my dues, learning from the masters, and so on.

Another recession, this one a whopper, came in 1980, and hung around until ’83 or so. I used most of ’80 to finish off my years of training, spending thousands on more classes, and the related travel. Imagine what $5,000 in 1980 dollars is worth today? I recently checked, and those same classes are now over twice the price. Fortunately I’d been frugal, and had the money to pay for this most valuable training. I believe those classes are what put me over the top. Those final several weeks of high level training were what I believed would allow me to play at the level to which I aspired. This turned out to be true, in spades.

How was I able to do all this?

I had a working wife — the real backbone of the real estate industry.

There are hundreds if not thousands of agents these days, who are already thanking their lucky stars for their working wives. Many agents will come to realize how golden their wives’ regular paycheck is. In fact, I’m here to tell them it might be because of their bride’s regular paycheck, that they’ll survive in the business until this ship is once again on an even keel.

It’s as likely as not, that without the regular paycheck provided by that super lady, I wouldn’t be where I am today. God bless her, and all the thousands of other wives who make up the backbone of the real estate industry.

They’ve never received the credit they deserve, and it’s about time they did.