exist Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-August. On January 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will be cut away, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. join us.
Martha Melendez wrote a book in January just like her mother always knew she would write.
Martha Melendez
You may know Melendez from her 2024 book, Aspiring Agents: From Overworked Rookie to Real Estate Star. Or you might recognize her from her show on HGTV My lottery dream home, or a stage show from WomanUP! or Engel & Völkers’ EVX sessions – she has been an agent with Engel & Völkers Melbourne for almost six years.
After meeting Melendez for the first time Women are up! 2022As she tells her story as a domestic violence survivor, two things are clear: She is a fierce, authentic, successful woman, and she attributes it all to her mom.
mother’s love
“My mom has always been my foundation, my rock, my everything,” Melendez told Inman.
Martha Melendez and her mother Maria Clementina Perdomo
“She was so ahead of her time. She wore jeans before anyone else. She cut off her hair because all the ladies at that time had [long hair] … She’s independent, kind of independent. She always felt like she could do things on her own and didn’t need a man to tell her what to do, and she never wanted to get married,” she said. But she didn’t.
When Meléndez was a child growing up in Colombia, teachers dictated all lessons, so students took copious notes. Meléndez’s mother, Maria Clementina Perdomo, took Meléndez’s notebooks from school every year and bound them into hardcover leather books, which she still has writing these books.
“Because she had a vision: She wanted me to be a writer. But she never told me that,” Melendez said.
Melendez said that while living in Colombia in the ’80s, Perdomo saw the drug cartels taking over everything, so Perdomo sold everything and moved himself and Melendez to the United States, although they None speak English.
Perdomo had retired in Colombia, but in the United States she accepted a $3-an-hour factory job. During the summers after she turned 14, Melendez would work alongside her.
Recognizing the need to adjust to her new home, Melendez said she signed her mother up for English classes every Monday and Wednesday at the Spanish Center in downtown Mount Holly, New Jersey.
They would walk the two miles to class after get off work, and Melendez would sit in on classes, telling the teacher she wasn’t sure her mother would be able to find her way home. She absorbed everything because she realized her mother needed her to learn English in this new life.
Then Melendez discovered they taught adult English at the high school on Tuesdays and Thursdays and signed up. Her mother didn’t speak English, but Melendez did. She learned to write checks, make doctor’s appointments and rent an apartment.
“This is a journey that I went through with my mom, and I think that’s why I always talk about her, because it’s always me and my mom,” Melendez said.
hard times
Martha Melendez and mother Maria Clementina Perdomo
Melendez married when she was 18. Work to make ends meet. She often relies on coffee cans.
“Thank God I made it out alive. A lot of people don’t do that,” Melendez told Inman. “I had to walk that far to open my eyes. I think I’d still be there with my can of Folgers.
A therapist once told her that when you can tell the story without crying, you are healed. She told this story for the first time on WomanUP! On stage, Folgers is available.
“It took me years to recover from this. I didn’t want to be a victim. I didn’t want to be a survivor, because that means you went through trauma and survived, and I wanted to thrive. I didn’t want to be the one who got hit. So I said, How do I change this narrative?“Melendez told Inman.
“I’m glad I went through that because it made me a stronger person. I can recognize that and I can help others,” she said.
Make mom’s dream come true
In 1998, Melendez reconnected with his 1992 prom date, Lucien Melendez. He pursued her vigorously, bought her a car and a house, and moved to Florida, where they married in 2000 and had two children.
Melendez obtained her real estate license in 2005 while teaching English as a Second Language. Lucien Melendez is now the vice principal of a high school in Viera, Florida.
Perdomo stayed by his daughter’s side and spent a happy new chapter. But unfortunately, she passed away on October 28, 2020. Melendez said it wasn’t until she lost her mother that she truly realized all the sacrifices she had made.
Martha Melendez and daughter Alexandra Vera
In January 2024, Melendez published her first book, fulfilling her mother’s dream, Aspiring Agents: From Overworked Rookie to Real Estate Star. She wished she had this book when she first started in real estate.
It’s the perfect guide for Melendez’s 29-year-old daughter, Alexandra Villa, who launched her real estate career in November 2023.
Melendez would read Vera her book while they were on long drives, and they would discuss it together, with Vera even quoting advice from the book to her mother. Today, Villa works in her mother’s office, which belongs to the Engel & Völkers family.
Melendez said it felt like she was repeating the cycle. “I work with my mom, and now [Alexandra] Start working with me. I hope now that she is older we can deepen our relationship. I’m so proud of the mom she is and I hope one day she can do the same for her daughter and we can have a third generation of real estate agents.
Email Danny Vanderbog
