Teri Adler
Title: Real Estate Agent
Age: 47
Experience: 10 years
Teri Adler is about as local as you can get. She grew up in Wayland, covered Greater Boston as TV reporter/anchor at WHDH, and has sold real estate in the Wellesley and Weston area for a decade now. She’s consistently one of the top three agents in Wellesley and credits her success to hard work and some of the skills she learned in the news business. She and her husband (a former TV news photographer) live in Wellesley with their three young daughters. A decade after leaving the station, she says she’s still loyal to her former colleagues at Channel 7 news.
Q: Did you just make a clean break from TV to real estate one day?
A: It was a really hard decision. When I anchored the mornings in Hartford, Connecticut, those hours did me in. I called my agent and told him I think I’m just going to go back and get my MBA. He told me Boston had just called him and I should give it a chance. My boyfriend, who is now my husband, was already here, so I said I’d do it and I got the job at Channel 7 and loved it. But I still wanted my MBA, so I did that. But it was hard to transition out of television. I was good at it and it was part of who I was. I would go to interview in corporate America and it was harder to transition those skills. And the pay was such a big discrepancy. So my broker, who is now my boss, told me I should work in real estate, but it was such a big identity change, I couldn’t envision it.
I got my real estate license and took the same class as another reporter, Sean Hennessy. The instructor was on edge the entire time and we didn’t realize why he was acting so strange. On the second day, he called us up and said “I’m sorry, I can’t relax. Are you doing an investigative story on this class?”
Soon after that, my best friend told me she was moving to Los Angeles and asked me to sell her house. So I did. Then the main anchor at Channel 7, Caterina Bandini, was buying a house in Weston and she used me. It was very helpful, but my business grew quickly from there. I am a worker bee. I always have been.
I was doing TV and real estate for about a year, but real estate took off so quickly that one day I called my husband and told him I was ready to make the leap. That was in 2006. I worked a lot and had two babies.
Q: What reporting skills translate well into selling real estate?
A: As a TV news reporter, you’re really storytelling every day, and you’re finding an angle on the story so that it appeals to a broader range of people. A lot of that is through emotion. You’re presenting yourself every day. I learned how to speak on my feet and work with people and now I’m selling my skills to clients. You’re trying to make a story interesting to people, and that’s what I’m doing in real estate; I’m reframing things so it works for them and they feel good about it and are educated about the process. I think I garnered those skills from news.
The presentation skills are the most helpful. You’re putting out fires in both field all the time. There’s never a dull moment. When I’m negotiating a multiple-offer deal, I have that same adrenaline as I used to get doing a live shot during breaking news. I’ve also always worked weekends, nights and holidays and in real estate I do a lot of the same, so my husband and I were prepared for that.
Q: Was it tough getting started?
A: I’ve been in two competitive fields, and the way I got through both of them is by not worrying about what everyone else is doing. I just worry about me, my sphere and my client relations. I control the quality of my business and the level of customer service I’m offering clients, and being ethical, honest and up front. I’m a relationship-builder, even with other brokers. I try to work with them. I’m happy for other people that do well. I just focus on my business. I think when you’re passionate about something and work hard and are honest, success will come. Being on TV helped a little at the beginning.
Q: What do you like most about selling real estate?
A: I love the people I meet. I love that I’m out in the field and I love that I’m not sitting in an office. I love building my own business. I’m having a big client party and I love creating that for my clients. I love thinking outside the box. I love marketing, and in the end I am hopefully making people happy.
Adler’s Top Five Most Common Quotes From Home Sellers:
- “My friends say I’m giving it away.”
- “I don’t need to sell.”
- “My house was recently updated” – in 1999.
- “We just haven’t found the right buyer.”
- “My house is so much better than the others on the market.”
