You can just read on to find out how some brokers and agents are considering their client’s minds, bodies, and soul paid off in business.
While the term “holistic” is often reserved for discussions of health and medicine, the masses of real estate professionals can easily apply this framework to their business. Some are even adding this to their professional title.
“Clients typically come to me because of that approach,” said Kristy Woodford, a broker at Windermere Real Estate/Olympia in Olympia, Wash., “Holistic real estate starts with the agent.” As I attend to my mind, body, and soul, I cultivate peace and well-being.
Woodford adds that her well-rounded approach enabled a seller in a tough deal to navigate the process with grace and love. This lead to challenges for both Woodford’s client and also the buyer with a structural issue found during the inspection as well as an untrustworthy lender. That said, all parties worked well together. He says that while the seller did not get his price, he did find great awe and wonder. Recently one of her clients even penned a note to the new homeowners expressing her love for the home and good luck! She chuckles when she writes: “That is holistic real estate for you. “It’s joy in the journey.”
What does it mean to be holistic Approach to Real Estate?
It is respecting the whole of the person, or situation. What it all comes down to, Woodford said, is that a holistic agent is someone who supports their clients through the real estate process with the good of the human being in mind. In holistic real estate as the name implies the goal is to approach what can be a very a difficult process, treating every one with care and instead of just getting a deal done, getting a deal done in the best interest of the physical, mental and emotional health of those that it pertains. This awareness can bring joy and better health to the experience, she explains.
Holistic real estate experts can provide further guidance, and can use things like feng shui to help discover the right house with additional relaxation to the family.
Lorraine DAversa, broker and lifestyle consultant at LifeStyle Realty and Consulting in Golden, Colo., says, “I help my clients identify what their best life modalities are. As a BSc qualified psychologist and nutritionist, her academic background allows her to better comprehend her client´s vision.She says that you cannot actually serve them if simply look to get them to entities in their price point. It has to be about more-do they need a large backyard because they like putting a garden in, or want a fire pit to roast s’mores with the grandchildren? During the initial consultation which could take several hours, She listens to her client their hopes, dreams, fears.
So how do holistic healers bring mind, body, and spirit into their business?
Mind: Woodford says holistic medicine attaches the use of intellect, facts and figures from the traditional to other elements of life. Holistic real estate follows this example. She still does comparative marketing analyses, urges clients to have inspections, stays current on legal updates, does due diligence, and tells either buyers or sellers what tasks they need to do. When put in the words of Woodford, “What generates the most awareness in one`s mind, is the wisdom of the body the Thing It is, the unknown (the spirit or soul).”
Body: Woodford helps her clients develop body intelligence. If her buyers are about to submit an offer on a house, she once asked them to consider the price they would like to offer, take a deep breath, and feel in their body what kind of visceral response they had to their thought. Do they feel stress like a squeeze in their chests? Something could live in our head but it might just be a moment from asking your own body what it thinks of it. Our bodies know,” she says.
Soul: A holistic approach to real estate is what Woodford calls stress-free living, JOY and good health. Health Boiling it all down, this whole process comes down to wonderment and awe… Creating a health and peace-inspiring approach to marketing and producing the process as enjoyable and easy for your clients. Indeed, Woodford says that some kind of faith is a requirement for making a holistic approach work—you have to have faith that the statistics can carry you.
What does holistic real estate require?
DAversa does a little more than other agents Following an online search, San Francisco home buyers retained her as their agent. She showed them around an entire house on Skype, and answered their questions as they collectively toured the property on their phones. I skydoped so far that I even met the neighbors for them over Skype down the block. That sold it for them. They loved the area and how loving the people were, she says.
DAversa says most of her clients become lifelong friends. She found a rural area for a young couple with two children, for example. I was so worried about them I started thinking, is this only helping them? Except we have been like a family to them ‘We clap for them,’ she says.
In advertising that she is a holistic broker, she has not only increased her number of friends and clients, but she tripled her revenue last year.
Is there any designation for holistic real estate agents yet?
Not yet, but both DAversa and Woodford hope they get to create something together in the near future. Woodford plans to present the concept to Windermere’s education division and to the National Association of REALTORS® with the hope of creating a certification or training for agents who are interested in the holistic approach.
Woodford explains that, “I know there are a lot of agents out there already following these principles, without calling it ‘holistic’. I prefer to focus on the joy and the light of a situation — and I know I’m not the only one.
