Behind the Yard Sign: Being Different and Creating Real Estate Culture That Attracts with Jenelle Isaacson, Founder of Living Room Realty

After starting on a new career path with the prominent and established Hasson Real Estate Company in Portland, OR, Jenelle Isaacson recognized she was a bit of a punk rock black sheep within her team. Coming from a background in music and having been a part of the quintessential Portland culture of embracing weirdness, her network and client base of colorful folks around town put her on a sort of social pedestal as an agent. She found there was a niche market base of clients and peers that had yet to be represented in the big, adult, financial commitments in home-owning. 

Listen to the entire Behind the Yard Sign episode with Jenelle here.

Founder Jenelle Isaacson started Living Room Realty in Portland, OR because she looked around and didn’t see anyone in real estate that reflected her or her people. Fast forward a decade and this woman-owned company is rocking it!

Jenelle decided to jump on it. She was migrating from her rock n roll past into motherhood and decided to open Living Room Realty in 2009 (while very pregnant and eventually nursing her first child). Location is what set the company off with a strong start. If it weren't for the gut feeling of her very loyal colleagues, Jenelle would never have made the move to open her first office in one of the most visible blocks of Portland.

The chance to have immediate presence came as huge luck to Living Room Realty. They were positioned right next door to one of the best known and most recognized breakfast & brunch spots in the popular Alberta District, The Tin Shed. The location -- which had long, lingering lines of [hungry] folks -- resulted in a quickly growing clientele base. Their in-your-face presence to on-lookers with listings in the windows launched them to be known as a true local business in a time when Portland as a city (and people's desire to be a part of it) was booming. 

Living Room Realty was founded by Jenelle in the last Great Recession.

Jenelle was real to herself through the entire process and embraced being human. Rather than letting the collapsing market get her and the business down, she chose to not let it add to her very inundated line-up of tasks and company growth. Her drive and commitment to represent real people made her business extremely relatable and approachable in the community. 

Most local businesses in Portland that are built from the ground up have almost naturally found ways to cater to the community and listen to people they serve. Jenelle and her team took requests and inquiries to heart and developed services around them which eventually led to more growth and more chances for success. The need for rental housing placement for example — no one was doing that! And with that perfect location of visitors flocking to brunch and falling in love with the City of Roses, they had a slew of interest desiring their attention.

We love a good "flopportunity," and Jenelle shared one of the biggest of her career with us during our podcast chat. As Living Room Realty quickly grew, she was also facing a trial of a time with the recent recession. To be starting a real estate company in a recession is shear madness, but her knack for staying positive and trusting that it would all work out got her through. When recruiting for agents, she couldn't look at their numbers based on the market conditions of the time. She cared more about the people she brought on and their character during the hard times as she knew that their ability to connect with their community and their partners and neighbors would come back to serve them long-term. 

"I had to look for other cues, and we still recruit like this today. It's been such an opportunity to hold true to our values because we aren't obsessed with the producing." Jenelle continued, asking rhetorically, "How are you invested? ...because I know that when the market returns, your community will come back and return that support to you."

Jenelle and the people that make up Living Room Realty have essentially developed huge levels of loyalty with their fellow citizens and business partners in Portland, OR and beyond. Her ability to really see and hear her clients and also the team she surrounds herself with has created something bigger than just a real estate company. They have a hub for connectivity in a city that prides itself on community and local integrity. We're thrilled to be a friend of Living Room Realty for home staging and cater each other's needs as businesses, because we, just like Jenelle, see the bigger picture and recognize that there's more to life than just selling homes and making them look pretty. It's about our connections and the impacts we can make to do and feel better.

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Spade and Archer Design Agency is a professional home stager in Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles. We start every single project with our Instant Price so let’s start the process of selling your home with an easy, free and instant quote. Spade and Archer is your no-risk, pay-at-closing, touchless installation, instant pricing home stager and we can’t wait to work with you.

Behind the Yard Sign: Listing Success with Get Happy at Home's Ian Gordon & Matt Miner of Coldwell Banker Bain

Everyone has the friend they know they can go to for a straight-up answer and a true conversation. At Spade and Archer, that friend is the team at Get Happy at Home. They're headed up by the dynamic duo of Matt Miner and Ian Gordon of Coldwell Banker Bain in Seattle, WA. Without them, we wonder if we would have even made it through the first wave of the Covid pandemic! Our working relationship is filled with more than just business as Matt and Ian come with not only true attention, strong vision, and a will to "make it right," but also a sense of humor that will get you through just about anything. In this latest episode of Behind the Yard Sign, we welcomed all of those things into our conversation with them as always.

Listen to the entire podcast episode here.

Matt Miner and Ian Gordon join Justin Riordan and Kelly Hanahan of Spade and Archer to talk about their successful listing process at Get Happy at Home in Seattle.

Matt and Ian are some of the most dedicated and passionate real estate agents that we know. They approach every Seattle listing and every client with the same valuable intentions and know that to make the experience worthwhile for everyone involved, everyone deserves to be treated well. This of course also applies to all the people that make the listing process work, too! Landscapers, painters, photographers, marketing staff, assistants, cleaners, home stagers... there are clearly many people that make a real estate community function, and Matt and Ian are extremely aware that no one is more important than the other. Their way of maintaining positive relationships and holding each other up within a buying or selling process has launched great success and growth, which of course, we as a vendor are always grateful.

Seattle’s Get Happy at Home always helps their sellers create strong listings by home staging and using other vendors to make the property shine online.

There are a ton of steps that agents can do to promote their listings, businesses, and brands. Get Happy sets an impressive tone for what is possible and they are not afraid to commit to each phase of their process and meet every need that comes their way. That said, they also know what works and develop an action plan for their listings to get things moving. Listening and understanding their market and the audience of buyers within, their team set a course for transforming their many listings from a personal, individualized home to a blank yet exciting slate that just about anyone can relate to. What's impressive is their ability to also know how to make this transformative process understandable to their sellers! 

Get Happy’s process works! This Magnolia home went pending in seven days after listing!

Matt and Ian, with their authentic and honest communication style, make the process relatable for their sellers to understand and therefore are given complete trust. Ian brings it home, stating, "Our only known form of communication is heavy humor and sarcasm. And so I think if we bring the data and we bring the knowledge and then we package it in this cute, sort of hilarious, funny way, it's also pretty disarming for people... and there's an inherent trust that kind of builds off of that." 

To expand upon their honest and authentic process, the two have worked tirelessly to generate a strong social media and web presence that mirrors their dedications and principles in the field, keeping it relative to what they know and to what they can live up to on a daily basis. "We want to model our marketing and our branding around the people that we want to work with too," adds Matt. They've developed an entity, both in-person and online, that caters mutually to the underlying needs of their clients and contractors. This way, they indirectly identify the people that they get along with and the people that will accept them for who they are. To Matt and Ian, it only makes sense that they accept those people as well.

Get Happy makes sure a potential buyer knows how to use every single space in a home by staging to every feature and functionality of the property.

In being unapologetically true to themselves while understanding the value of being kind and positive, the two have been able to carry their business a tremendous distance. After settling into their strong, energized presence, you quickly come to find that they are coming to you with a wealth of knowledge and ready to roll up their sleeves to strategize. "I think that if you do right by people, you put their interests at least equal if not greater than yours," Matt explains. His distaste for sales helped create a direct structure of working and communicating within his business. When asked about their secret sauce of success, Matt confides that he's very open and leaves it to his clients. "I don't tell them what to do. I never tell anyone what to do. I'm just consulting." It's a hands-off approach with inherent loyalty that is also coming from sincere experience. He continues, “it's a matter of showing a client what the potential earning looks like and then being correct."

All in all, the team at Get Happy at Home just want their clients and the people they include in their process to be… happy! Beyond the dedicated level of service and lively transparency, the team shines as a solid example of an honorable real estate group. Matt and Ian want great things for their clients and industry partners, but what's incredible is their ability to look beyond and aim higher. In reflection of what could really hold a business back, Matt instructs to "use your powers for good, and don't ever betray that trust between you and your client. Because if you do, your business will fail and you will fail and you won't have the esteem or integrity to stand upon that you need." 

Want to work with this magical duo and their team at Get Happy? Or maybe you want to learn more through following them through their endless amount of blogs or on social media? Check 'em out at gethappyathome.com. Trust us, it'll be a very fun time!

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Spade and Archer Design Agency is a professional home stager in Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles. We start every single project with our Instant Price so let’s start the process of selling your home with an easy, free and instant quote. Spade and Archer is your no-risk, pay-at-closing, touchless installation, instant pricing home stager and we can’t wait to work with you.

Design Principle: Working Vintage Into Modern Homes

Houses come in all shapes and styles. A great house can get overlooked simply because a buyer doesn’t relate to the style. A modern looking house may turn some buyers off just from the street: it’s not their style, they can’t see their family there, they get defensive on how they live their lives. But once they come inside and see a blend of furnishings, they relax to the possibility of living there. At Spade and Archer, we use a mix of modern, contemporary, and vintage furniture and accessories in our staging to make it relatable to a wider range of buyers.

One of the great advantages of working vintage pieces into your home staging is the chance to elicit an emotional reaction from a potential buyer.  Something as simple as a vase or painting might remind them of something they had in their childhood home, or Grandma’s house or even a favorite piece they’ve seen in a movie.  That instant, subconscious connection to a particular item could keep the buyer in the house longer and make them dream of their own vintage pieces there. An emotional connection is a powerful resource and often outweighs the dozen other logical reactions they may have to the space.   

If someone is into all modern, chances are that’s the kind of furniture they already have.  They are interested in that style and they don’t need to be convinced of it.  Someone else, however, may have a  few modern pieces, but hardly live the Brutalist lifestyle. They have some inherited pieces as well that mean something to them.  They have a lifetime of shopping and collecting and they need to see their eclectic tastes reflected in this home. 

Having only one style or period of furnishings in a home makes it feel stiff and unnatural.  An entire house filled with modern furniture is unapproachable. It can feel like a beautiful photo shoot- something that looks good but not something you can actually touch and have.  In home staging, we of course want the home to look great,  we want the pictures to be attractive and searchable, we want the buyer to be impressed and interested in our spaces, but we also want it to be accessible and comfortable. 

You can easily work vintage pieces into modern architecture. Thoughtful uses of aged, curvy antique wood furniture counterbalances the sharp, cool lines of modern design.  The difference of textures and contours is pleasing to the eye.  Soft lines make sharp angles more special and vice versa.  The lines of the home can actually be accentuated by contrasting them with something different.  A straight line of a wall next to the straight line of a dresser can nullify both of them; the architecture of the home disappears.  Contrasting that straight wall line with something different will highlight it and draw attention to the home itself.  Our ultimate goal is to sell the house - not our style - so the more attention that can be redirected to the house, the better. 

Style is subjective, taste is not.  Trying to force one particular style on a buyer will result in a defensive posture.  It would be a shame to miss out on the opportunity of a great home just because the buyer was turned off by its style.  Mix and match is the way to go when trying to appeal to a wider audience.  Selling the house is the point, and doing whatever is necessary to make each home stand out is the goal behind our staging. 

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Spade and Archer Design Agency is a professional home stager in Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles. We start every single project with our Instant Price so let’s start the process of selling your home with an easy, free and instant quote. Spade and Archer is your no-risk, pay-at-closing, touchless installation, instant pricing home stager and we can’t wait to work with you.

Behind the Yard Sign: Being Your Own Brand with Boise's Donna Wade

People come in all shapes, sizes and personalities.  Real estate agents are no different. Donna Wade is a Boise, Idaho real estate agent and a real character.  She shared with us the importance of always being yourself and how to make that part of your brand - no matter what you’re selling.

Donna Wade has been a friend of the Spade and Archer family for years.  She first met Justin Riordan, owner and founder, when they were teenagers on the dance floor in a Boise gay bar.  Justin saw this tall drink of water from across the room and ignored all the guys there just to get a chance to talk to her. Their eccentric personalities blended and they have been friends ever since. 

Justin and Kelly interviewed Donna for Episode 5 of Behind the Yard Sign and you can listen to the entire conversation here!

While Justin has been in the real estate biz for more than 20 years, Donna is a recent convert to the game.  That doesn’t make her any less successful or have any less drive for it, though.  Four years ago she started her own business as a real estate agent and has been going like gangbusters ever since.

Donna had always dreamed of being a teacher. She worked as a college adjunct instructor after getting her undergraduate in communications. After college, she got involved in non-profit work and spent the next 14 years in different non-profits from hospice to social justice. She picked up an MBA along the way and juggled those two careers for a long time.  

“I realized there was only so far I could go,” she says about her years of teaching, executive directing at non-profits and grant writing. She was looking for something else.  “I hit my forties and my son got a little older. I was approached by a long-time friend who had helped me buy my house and he had an opportunity to join a team. There was an opportunity to become the assistant director of operations for the team and with my business background, it seemed like it could be a fit. So, I interviewed and I did get hired for that job.”

It was a complete change from where she was, but she decided to give it a shot.  That position never materialized, but she was put in a transaction coordination chair as part of the team.  The paperwork was mind-numbing and was sucking the lifeblood out of her because she’s a total people person.  She went to the team owner and said, “I gotta be an agent. I gotta be with the people. I belong there.”

Everyone agreed and that’s how Donna got started selling houses herself.  About this new venture, she ruminates: “It's all very interesting, but I am more motivated by the people and their goals and their objectives and the relationships that I form. That's what keeps me inspired to be in real estate. And that's why I know I'm going to do it forever because you're always meeting different people. You're always in different situations and everybody has a different story.”

Donna is an admitted goofball. In her social media posts she could be dancing in a silly skirt, doing Stevie Nicks impressions, vacuuming or impersonating Anne Bennett. It didn’t start out that way though.  At first her posts were highly informative but bone dry.  She was imitating the things other agents where doing. There is an unspoken model of what a “professional” looks like and she was doing her best to mimic that.  “So, who do I want to attract?” she asked herself. “Well, I want to attract people that get it. I'm dorky and fun and goofy, and also have an MBA and also have business savvy and also will advocate for you.”

That’s what motivated Donna to make her personality her brand. “If I put myself out there and someone encounters that and they think to themselves, ‘She's not professional. She's not polished enough. She's not slick enough.’ I'm thinking, well, that's probably good. That's not the kind of person that is going to be attracted to me. And that's okay.  I don't have to appeal to everyone.”

When new agents see her posts, they ask for advice: “Have savvy about how you're doing it and do it often, but be real. You can be professional and be real at the same time.”

The reason people want to work with Donna, and keep coming back, is her authenticity.  Someone spending their money on a home has to trust the person they’re working with.  If she put on airs – wearing pearls and driving the Land Rover - to act like other agents do, it would be phony and it would come across that way.  People wouldn’t trust her or want to work with her if she was obviously being fake and not true to herself.  There are so many types of people out there and that’s why there are so many different agents.  You have to find the right one that clicks because nobody fits only one mold.

Is it hard to be so vulnerable all time? “When I realized that I could meld being me and doing this and helping people reach their goals, that meant a lot to me. I'm looking at the business as a relationship business. So, I'm here to advocate for my clients, help them meet their goals and do that in a way that helps them feel as calm as possible, relieve as much stress as possible, and is an intelligent streamlined process for them. That's what I'm focused on.” 

She can only be the best for her clients when she is being her best self.  Real estate is a business of personality.  You are the face and heart of your own business so it only makes sense to promote yourself in the most authentic way possible. “I think you can put your best foot forward and be an excellent professional and be fun all at the same time.”

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Spade and Archer Design Agency is a professional home stager in Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles. We start every single project with our Instant Price so let’s start the process of selling your home with an easy, free and instant quote. Spade and Archer is your no-risk, pay-at-closing, touchless installation, instant pricing home stager and we can’t wait to work with you.

Design Principle: Removing the "No"s

The process of finding the perfect home consists of more than just your real estate agent sending you the perfect listing and you paying the funds. It actually has a plethora of logical and emotional reactions that guide your mind through making the right decision.

Before Priority Preparations and staging. Plenty of No’s here for a future buyer.

After Priority Preparations and professional staging from the Spade and Archer Seattle team. All of the No’s are removed.

These numerous logical reactions such as location, size, schools, and price, are things locked in stone and nothing we can change. The emotional reaction could come from a gut response to things such as a bad paint color, a number of needed home repairs, or its cleanliness.  These are the reactions that translate into NOs.  These are the things we can control. 

At Spade and Archer, we do what we can to eliminate the NOs. After a site visit, we will present to the seller a list of Priority Preparations.  Depending on which program the seller decides to utilize, these are the items we think need to be addressed in order to eliminate that negative gut reaction.  We look at a home from a buyer’s perspective.  We want to remove that visceral response that will override all the logical ones that say this is the perfect house for you.   

Before Priority Preparations and staging.

After Priority Preparations and professional home staging by the Spade and Archer Seattle team.

For example, a full kitchen remodel may not be possible or even necessary when listing the home.  Something as simple as updating the cabinet hardware, though, might make the kitchen tolerable for a few more years until the new homeowner can revamp the kitchen the way they want to. A buyer will come into that space and see that it needs work but is livable and that will make necessary future changes palatable.

Before Priority Preparations and professional home staging.

After Priority Preparations are completed and staged by the Spade and Archer Seattle team.

Simply cleaning up the landscape or fixing holes in the wall will present the home in a better condition. Changing out dirty ceiling fans or outdated lighting fixtures could be the right way to get a buyer to see this house as move-in ready. If someone walks in and immediately sees all the work they have to do to make it livable, the “NO’s” start to win out. 

Paint colors always elicit an emotional response.  The house may be great, but a bright red wall could create an unexplainable negative reaction that leads to the buyer walking out without considering the home as a whole. Darker paint can make a room feel small even though it’s of adequate size.  It’s not logical, but the buyer will feel uncomfortable here and not consider this home as an option for them.  We try to neutralize all paint colors so that they are inoffensive to a buyer. No reason to lose a sale just because someone doesn’t like your color choices.  

Every property is unique and depending on their age, style and amenities - they all require specific fixes to make them a top listing.  We come out and inspect the house thoroughly to help find these damaging “NO’s”.  We carefully consider what is necessary to present this home in the best light possible. As the stager, we know it’s our job to do what most homeowners can not: look at the property objectively. Having that space be their home for so long, it’s almost impossible to look at it any differently. It’s our goal to partner with the seller and streamline the process without overwhelming them, thus helping them present only what is relevant and most effective in selling the home.  We want to eliminate the NOs and make a sale. 

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Spade and Archer Design Agency is a professional home stager in Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles. We start every single project with our Instant Price so let’s start the process of selling your home with an easy, free and instant quote. Spade and Archer is your no-risk, pay-at-closing, touchless installation, instant pricing home stager and we can’t wait to work with you.