This picture was taken last May of 2005 during a Sturgeon fishing trip on the lower Columbia.  My client and I had a rather slow day with just a few shakers (undersized fish) until this rod went straight down.  For the next twenty minutes it was shear chaos as the guide, his father, my client and myself all did an elaborate dance around the boat while this oversized fish fought like crazy.  The guide used the boat to run the fish down twice as it nearly spooled us (used all the line on the reel).  When the adrenaline wore off we had successfully released our seven foot fish, broken the fishing rod and cracked the guide's ribs.  Yes, that is right, the fish decided it didn't want its picture taken, even though we followed protocol and left it in the water, so with a flick of its tail it slammed the guide into the side of the boat and cracked two of his ribs.   Final Score:  Fish 2, Fisherman 00.  It remains my favorite fishing story to date.

I think the same part of me which loves fishing makes me a good Realtor.  When the run is on it doesn't take any skill to catch fish, and the last few years in real estate have definitely been like a record run of choice fish.  But times have changed.  Our market changed from a strong sellers market to a more balanced market during the fall and winter of 2006 and became a real buyers opportunity in the summer and fall.  The signs of change are everywhere.  Since Last spring there has been a dramatic increase in the number of listings on the market.  In the month of January alone our inventory moved from 3.3 months to 5.4 months of available housing and by fall we were looking at 7 plus months of inventory on the market.  That means that at our current pace it would  take over seven months to sell every listing.  Compare that to last summer when it would have taken just under two months and you can see that a buyer has a whole lot more power today than yesterday.  On top of that, many of the major builders have reduced their prices.  Last spring I remember saying "Oh no!" when I witnessed a lottery in a subdivision where fewer buyers showed up than the number of lots that came available.  Over the year we have also seen a slow trickle of agents leaving the business.  Certainly, the national predictions of the end of the world have not come to pass.  However, one thing is for certain: we won't be returning to our record runs any time soon.  Now it's time to sort out the fisherman from those who were merely riding the wave.

The biggest key to being a successful fisherman is time on the river.  The same holds true in the real estate business.  You have to put in your hours before you close a sale.  Yet I think there is another important skill both fisherman and Realtors share.  They both must be experts in the fine art of patience.  Any fisherman who goes to the river and only finds happiness when they are catching a fish will soon lose patience with the sport and move on to "better" things.  Yet any fisherman who says its not about catching fish is just a plain liar.  The same holds true for me in Real Estate.  If I didn't make money I wouldn't do the job and yet, if I only found joy in my work when I was making money, there would be no way to endure the dry spells which are part of the job.  The greatest satisfaction in my work comes from people, and it is the relationships I have a chance to build which get me through the times when the market is slow. 

Perhaps this doesn't make a lot of sense to those of you in the public who don't understand how my business works.  I am paid on a commission only basis.  That means I don't make any money when I don't sell homes.   So for me, as the sole income for my family, a market downturn can be nerve-wracking.  If I allow that reality to control me there is no way I will get up in the morning and go to work.  Not that I am perfect.  There are days....  However, when I focus each day on helping people and not on whether or not I am going to get paid for my work today, I find great satisfaction in what I do.  In this way my job is just like the fisherman who throws his or her bait in the water one more time to catch the big one.  For both of us, this is an act of willed patience.