Elli in Royal LePage’s Best of the Best

REM Issue #285, March 2013

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In its illustrious 100-year history, Royal LePage has produced dozens of top sales professionals. The top one per cent of the company’s sales professionals become part of the National Chairman’s Club. In the last decade, three sales reps who are consistently at or near the top of the list are Elli Davis, Dan Cooper and Loretta Phinney. Recently REM asked them about the secrets of their success and longevity…

ELLI DAVIS

After scoring 100 per cent on her third and final real estate course, Elli Davis received her licence in 1983. She joined A.E. LePage’s Summerhill office in Toronto and sold her first property three weeks later. She has been with Royal LePage ever since and held the No. 1 spot in the company’s sales rankings for 12 consecutive years.

Davis is also a long-time supporter of the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation. Her annual donations place her in the top one per cent of all donors across Canada.

What was your first day as a Realtor like and how does it compare to a typical day now?
I originally applied for a job at 33 Yonge St. to sell/lease commercial properties, as I had heard residential was all “nights and weekends”. They sent me to a residential recruiter who called the manager of the Yonge Street branch and invited me for an interview. He encouraged me to start right away and led me to my cubicle with a shelf above and a dial phone (with a hold button) and said, “Go to it.”

From there, I started listening to other agents and created a card that I sent to all of my “very
few contacts” to inform them of my new career. I clipped listings, went to agent open houses and took anyone that could walk and talk to see properties, stopping at pay phones to get messages. I open-housed every weekend in the hot summer of 1983!

My typical day now is arriving at the office between 9-10 unless I have an appointment elsewhere. I review new listings, follow up with appraisals, talk to current sellers, meet with my team and view agent open houses unless I have one of my own. The afternoons are usually for listing appointments, personal errands, some lunches and general things that just always seem to come up. The days go by very quickly. Evenings are generally free for dinners at home or out, theatre, family and fun.

Today technology and my support staff enable me to increase my business year after year. I
concentrate on the listings but remain very “hands on” with all aspects of the everyday operation of my business. I am always accessible and efficient, which has contributed to consistent repeat and referral opportunities.

How do you keep your career fresh?
I make every day different and prioritize the most important tasks of the day. I am always networking, taking courses, learning, brainstorming and updating marketing materials and pictures. I keep my technology current. I love to read sales books and motivational success stories in all types of careers.

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was a child I was very shy and had no confidence in myself. Being the tallest girl in the class was not a good thing. I didn’t have any definitive career goal as didn’t feel I was very smart. I gradually realized during university that I enjoyed teaching and psychology and continued with my education to become a primary school teacher. I realized after about the first week that this was not where I wanted to stay but it took me seven years to take a leave of absence. I believe I took a chance at real estate with the inner strength of just going for it and with the motivation and determination not to return to the classroom.

What do you do for fun?
I enjoy travelling, exploring new countries, going on cruises, the theatre, spas, shopping, swimming and boating. I enjoy entertaining friends and spending time at the cottage. I have had the ultimate joy of being married to a great man for over 25 years and enjoying time with four grandchildren and a lot of immediate and extended family. I actually love working because I don’t consider it as “work”….most days.

Who is the person (business or personal) who inspires you most?
Even though I lost my parents several years ago, my father was a unique, fun-loving and innovative salesman without a formal education, but with the motivation to always try something new. He was a risk taker and so am I. My mother had an “at home” sales career but was born in the wrong generation. She was overly devoted to her three children. I believe she would have been a huge success in her own right as well but she really never had the chance. My sadness lies in the fact that she never saw me in my real estate career and my father only witnessed the first few years. They still inspire me.

2012 Royal LePage National Chairman’s Club

Royal LePage National Chairman’s Club – click image to enlarge

Congratulations to all my colleagues! I am very thankful and honoured to be a member of the Royal LePage National Chairman’s Club alongside such hardworking people.

Elli Davis in The Globe and Mail

Published in The Globe and Mail, 24 January 2013

by Carolyn Ireland

Toronto skyline by elPadawan

Of all the zany things happening in Toronto’s real estate market last week, perhaps the most mind-boggling was the melee that erupted over a pleasant yet unremarkable condo unit near Yonge and Davisville.

Seven parties leapt into the competition and pushed the sale price to $420,000 – or 8 per cent above the asking price of $389,000.

David Fleming of Bosley Real Estate Ltd., is one agent who was staggered by the deal. He wrote about it in his Toronto Realty Blog.

Mr. Fleming says there’s too much choice in the condo market right now for it to make sense for buyers to compete over a run-of-the-mill unit.

“I would never in this market tell a buyer to get involved in a bidding war on a condo,” he said in an interview.

“A nice house in Riverdale maybe – but not a condo.”

But that’s just one deal and Mr. Fleming says it could be an outlier. The point is that the market is extremely erratic at the moment.

The numbers from the Toronto Real Estate Board show that sales edged up 2.4 per cent in the Greater Toronto Area in the first half of January compared with the same period last year. The average selling price rose by 4 per cent in the same period.

But the market was – and continues to be – choppy and weird. Some properties stagnate for weeks and then sell at a significant discount of the asking price, while others sell overnight for more. Mr. Fleming raises another example of a house in the west end that had an asking price just less than $550,000, which is a segment of the market that draws lots of buyers.

His clients were primed to make an offer on Tuesday, which was the night set aside for reviewing bids. But before they had the chance, the house was sold late last Friday when a bully offer landed in front of the sellers.

So-called bullies usually offer an amount so substantial that the sellers are tempted to snatch at it. But in this case, Mr. Fleming points out, the bully got the house for $580,000. It’s a great deal for the buyer, he figures, but the sellers left a substantial amount of money on the table.

“I would have bought that house at that price and I’m not even in the market.”

His clients, he says, would have offered $610,000 or $620,000.

“That was frustrating. My clients are crushed.”

Elli Davis, an agent with Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., cites the example of a house in Moore Park that received two offers and sold for $2.375-million. That marks a $176,000 premium above the asking price.

Mr. Fleming also had a buyer interested in that one, but the house sold within a day of coming on the market – before they even got over there to see it.

“Here I was telling him that I didn’t think the property would move.”

Mr. Fleming says lots of listings are sitting. He can’t imagine another condo unit getting seven offers in the current market.

“There are a million cookie-cutter condos out there that no one cares about.”

Ms. Davis says she tallied eight deals in January, 2012, but so far this year she has only recorded four. Still, she hopes to make up the difference by the end of the month.

“I’ve got a few in the works. Buyers just seem to be taking a little bit more time.”

Ms. Davis says some buyers are speculating that prices may fall and wonder if they should wait. But others are willing to move if they see the right property.

“They want that security that the market isn’t going to totally fall out of bed.”

She’s advising sellers to set a realistic asking price instead of setting an eye-catching price in the hope of sparking a bidding war. But she also cautions against asking too much. Prices have softened a bit since last spring, she says.

“If you’re way too high, people will ignore you and buy something that’s not.”

Mr. Fleming says the lack of snow in January may have helped the market because house hunters had no trouble tramping around. And even the arctic temperatures this week didn’t deter the buyers of 76 Langley Ave. in Riverdale. The home, priced at $949,000, sold Tuesday night for $1,129,000. “So much for the impending real estate crash,” he says. But the volatile nature of the market makes it difficult for agents to predict how the spring will shape up.

“One day you might get five offers on a house and the next week a house down the street gets zero.”

Women’s Post: Canada’s Top Women in Real Estate, Home and Design

Published in Women’s Post, Sarah Lambert, 18 June 2012.

Elli Davis, Sales Representative, Royal LePage

Even as an elementary school teacher, Elli was constantly reading real-estate ads and going to open houses on weekends.

“I guess I always had a latent interest in real estate without even realizing it was there,” she says.

At a friend’s urging, she took the required courses. That was in 1983.

Within three weeks she had sold her first home.

By 1987, she’d been named the number one agent for Royal LePage and, although the company has quadrupled in size since she started out, Elli still maintains one of the very top positions within the company.

Elli has been able to achieve this level of success by following her golden rule: “I always service my customer as I would want to be serviced myself and I truly care about their largest asset as if it were my own money.”

By pushing herself out of her comfort zone, Elli has created a life that she loves – balancing her time between her inspiring career and her family.

“Take a chance, become uncomfortable,” she urges, “If you make yourself uncomfortable, it’s amazing how fast you become comfortable; and if you’re not, then go on and try something else. The minute I started real estate, I knew it was just perfect for me.”