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Cassie Walker Johnson has been a broker with Windemere Real Estate in Seattle since 2005 and has practiced with her husband, Jeremey Johnson, her entire brokerage career, except for a career in property management following the 2008 recession.
Throughout her career, she has been known as an expert on buyer’s agreements and attributes this in large part to the systems she has put in place to ensure transactions go smoothly. She will share tips on how to implement effective systems at the upcoming Inman Connect Las Vegas conference and share her story of how her system saved her business after a breast cancer diagnosis in 2021. Walker Johnson.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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Inman: What is it like being part of a husband and wife team?
Johnson: That’s interesting. There are good days and there are frustrating days, but quite frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Real estate is actually a lonely industry and being able to have a business partner, especially when they’re your spouse, is a really great way to do it because my husband is the only one I can turn to and say “you know what? Don’t want to work” but gave no reason. It’s definitely a challenge because we have to be very religious about having date nights where we don’t talk about work, which is hard to do.
You are well known as an expert on buyer agreements. How did you earn this reputation?
Back in 2006, we had a friend – I’ll say “friend” in quotes – with whom we traveled for six solid months, like every weekend, across a wide range of miles and territories. But we had a great time. That’s a friend. Six months later she called me and she said “I bought a house” and I said… “What?”
In each case, she reached an agreement with the listing agent. It was a listing that hadn’t sold yet and they lowered the price and waived comps and all that kind of stuff, so it worked out for her.
Her dream house was finally within her dream budget. Of course, she’ll do whatever it takes to bring it home. But we have a responsibility to explain to her how we work and how we get paid. That’s when we really started to realize the benefits of using a buyer’s agreement. But we don’t use it religiously—we use it everywhere.
We would use it on people who we thought might not be as loyal to us as my sister or others. It was really around 2017 that these various things came to fruition.
When we started using this tool, our business became stronger, our systems became more robust, and it really helped increase production. It really helped us weed out the not-so-serious buyers who might have been wasting our time, and it also helped us have an equity perspective that we hadn’t really focused on before. What it comes down to is “Okay, why are we getting some buyers to sign this agreement and others not?” Are we looking at fair home equity issues?
That’s when it became our policy.
I started teaching our buyer system about two years ago. Windermere came up to me and said, “Look, you seem to be using this with every buyer. It looks like you have a system. Are you willing to share it with others? That’s when I started teaching our eight-step process.” And how to easily incorporate this protocol into your daily life.
Can you share your plans for Connect’s debut?
I think the most important thing that I’m excited to share with you all is this process and how easy it is, and helping agents and brokers understand that when you create a system, you take your success to the next level.
I’m going to share my story about how I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021, just like every other real estate agent in America, it was a record-breaking year and if we didn’t have these systems, like our eight- for buying For home owners and sellers, the step-by-step process we will not be able to complete. So I’m going to talk about the importance of these systems and my personal story of how it saved our business.
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