How Do You Maintain Work-Life Balance in Real Estate?
To help real estate professionals maintain a work-life balance in this demanding field, we asked experts, including a real estate broker and CEO, for their best advice. From choosing real estate for interest to setting expectations and boundaries early, here are five valuable tips to guide you towards a more balanced and fulfilling career.
- Choose Real Estate for Interest
- Be Fully Present with Family
- Leverage Technology and Teammates
- Utilize Time-Blocking Techniques
- Set Expectations and Boundaries Early
Choose Real Estate for Interest
Choose real estate because it interests you. If it does, maintaining a work-life balance will be easier because it won't feel like work. When I got into real estate investing, I was already working a full-time job. But because I loved finding deals and helping people get affordable housing, it wasn't overwhelming. And today, I'm retired thanks to real estate, even though I'm still in my early thirties.
Be Fully Present with Family
As a real-estate professional with two kids, I understand firsthand the challenges of maintaining a work-life balance in this demanding field. Real estate is often a 24/7 job, and it can feel like you always need to be available for your clients. My key piece of advice is to be fully present when you're spending time with your children. Put your phone on silent and dedicate specific times of the day to family. It's crucial to create a schedule that prioritizes family time, just as you would for any important meeting or client. This not only helps in being more productive during work hours but also ensures that your family doesn't feel neglected. Additionally, consider leveraging technology and delegating tasks where possible to free up more personal time. Remember, striking a balance is essential for both your professional success and personal well-being.
Leverage Technology and Teammates
Leverage technology or great teammates to assist you with work-life balance. Whether you switch your phone to an answering service or auto-responder in the evening, or work with a fantastic teammate to help with showings, it is important to carve out time for your family or self every once in a while. You'll be refreshed to put the best foot forward for your clients, and they'll appreciate that.
Utilize Time-Blocking Techniques
One tip I have for maintaining a work-life balance in the demanding field of real estate is to time-block. Time-blocking is an effective way to keep one's focus on one specific task and maximize one's productivity. By time-blocking, one can have blocks of time set to take care of one's health, work, relationships, and self-care. This is a very effective way that one can maintain a work-life balance, and failure to do so may result in unintended consequences such as burnout. By utilizing a tool like time-blocking, one can be sure that they will successfully be able to manage themselves to have a more fulfilling work-life balance.
Set Expectations and Boundaries Early
One of the things I stress to my Real Estate Agents and Loan Officer clients is to set expectations and boundaries right from the start and communicate them.
FIrst step is to come up with your non-negotiables and plan those into your schedule just like any other appointment. Often clients will fight me on this saying they would need to be available and that their clients won't understand. And you know what some client's won't.
But what I have found is that if you wouldn't interrupt a meeting with a client to answer another client, which most of us wouldn't, then the same goes for "meetings" with yourself as the appointment.
I find what often works is replying to the inquiry whether it's via text, call, or email with the statement "Hey I am in an appointment right now, I can respond at (time) when I'm done is that ok?"
Most people totally understand and are fine with it. But most Agents won't do it because they believe they ARE available so they should just do it now, and interrupt whatever they were doing.
There will be times you have to and should break those boundaries, but make that the exception instead of the rule. Train your clients what the process and expectations are and they will follow it most of the time.
