Editorial
Front Page - Monday, December 14, 2009
Benton Realtor says warmth of Saline County residents helped her succeed
Ethan C. Nobles
After 23 years of selling real estate, Pat Mote has established a well-known presence in Saline County.
It might, in fact, surprise some people to know she isn’t native to that county.
Mote and her husband, Jerry, moved to Bryant from Pocahontas and she started her real estate career in 1986. Mote said she was impressed at how quickly her family was accepted in Saline County.
“We just moved to central Arkansas and I didn’t know anybody here,” she said. “I couldn’t get over how warm the people are down here. They accepted us like we were from here.”
Prior to coming to central Arkansas, Mote had done administrative work in California, had worked for the County Extension Service in Arkansas, was a substitute teacher in the Pocahontas School District and even held a security clearance when she worked in the defense industry. After spending some time raising her children, Mote said she decided to pursue her interest in selling real estate.
That career has become a family business. Jerry Mote took early retirement in 2000 from Farm Bureau in Little Rock where he had been a district claims supervisor. He now takes care of the books and helps run Weichert Realtors Pat Mote Properties in Benton.
Mote’s son, Mitchell, is also a Realtor and executive broker at the office.
Mote said she started out at a Century 21 franchise, then worked several years with an independent company before opening her own office in January 1999. In December 2005, Mote and her husband made the decision to purchase a Weichert franchise.
Why Weichert? “They are different,” she said of the company established by Jim Weichert on the East Coast – he went on to own over 250 offices and made the decision to start selling franchises. “Their core values really spoke to me.”
Mote said she is very impressed with Marty Reuter, the president of Weichert Real Estate Affliates.
“He is such a quality individual,” Mote said. “Everything he does is ‘God and country.’”
Mote said she had gotten along fine as an independent agent, but a change in her office caused her to consider aligning with a franchise. Mote said she worked with sellers and her agents worked with buyers. She wanted her agents to start working with sellers, too, but she didn’t have the training programs on hand to help get them up to speed and start representing those clients.
Weichert, however, did have the training available. Furthermore, Mote said she was impressed with the franchise opportunities available from the company as she was flown to the company’s headquarters in New Jersey, thoroughly interviewed before she was presented with the opportunity to purchase the franchise and learned about the company’s substantial referral network.
People looking to buy or sell homes that visit Weichert on the Internet at Weichert.com are given the chance to be put in touch with a local Realtor. Also, Weichert Realtors Relocation does send a good amount of relocation business her way.
Just as Weichert is a different kind of franchising model, Mote’s office is unique, too. There are 11 Realtors in her office and a good number of them are part-time agents. While Mote said she’d prefer that those agents work full-time selling real estate, she had little choice but to let some of them work at her office on a part-time basis.
“I had to (let some of them work part-time) when the economy slowed,” she said. “Some of their families depend on their salaries to pay their bills. If they’re not doing their normal volume, then they had to go and do something to help out.”
Besides, she said those agents have been well trained by Weichert and it would be a shame to lose them permanently. Allowing them to work part time and then come back on a full time basis when the economy improves makes sense, Mote said.
“You spend a lot of time learning the ropes,” Mote said of the process of becoming an effective Realtor – losing well trained Realtors permanently could be bad for business.
She said Weichert offers its four-week “Fast Track to Success” series that can provide agents with the tools to effectively buy and sell real estate.
Mote may not have grown up in Saline County, but she says she’s been around long enough to know why people move to the area and stay there.
“I think it’s the people,” she said of the county’s appeal. “The warmth and the acceptance of the people out here – it’s more of a country atmosphere. It’s not small town, but it has that small-town feel.”
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