Bad Market

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this before but I am a realtor as well as my 10 other occupations. What can I say? I'm a workaholic!
I put my license on hold while I was pregnant and decided to bring it back and change offices at the same time. My parents and a few friends were planning to sell their property so I started work last month.
I am sitting at an open house for my parents house right now and granted it's only been 30 minutes since I started, I really don't think anyone is going to come.

Real Estate nationally is doing poorly. We all know that. Chicago is suffering from the same national crisis but generally homes in the higher price bracket ususally are immune to the national average because rich people will always buy and sell. Of course the higher interest rates effects everyone so people are still cautious but I had this house on the market for over 3 weeks and I didn't get a single call. Not A one!
Part of the problem is that this house is pricey, $899 to be exact. I could go lower but my parents aren't in a pinch to sell it and so they are testing things out for now. They need to sell it to be able to have some breathing room because they are planning a semi-retirement by selling off their main business this month. But they don't want to lose money as well. The price is actually not bad for this neighborhood and the size of this house but it's a little above the competitive bracket.

Another problem with this is that the realtor, me, is not all that happy with her job. I only work with family and friends, I dont' do real estate to live off of so when I do it, it's usually fun and exciting. However since the birth of Elle, I've lost that drive to make money and keep working. All I want to do is stay at home and bake cookies and do laundry. Well not really do laundry but you know what I mean. I always thought that even after I had a child that I would be the parent making the money and my husband would be the stay at home parent. Things sure do change when your vagina is ripped open! I LOVE being a mom more than anything and all this need and desire to make money doing something that really doesn't do much for me emotionally seems to be a waste of time.

Finally, a huge part of the reason I started up again was because I can't say no. I am incapable of saying no to someone, anyone, ESPECIALLY my mom. Part of saying no is quiting. I can't quit anything. A recent episode of Grey's Anatomy shows how Meredith tells her shrink that she is firing her but is brought back into reality by her therapist when she asks why she is quitting. She adamently refuses that she is quitting, only firing her because she isn't helping. I feel the same way. I can't quit anything. I have always hated the slimey part of real estate and it pulled at my consciencious every time I had to deal with other slimey realtors during a transaction. I worked so hard for over 6 years to keep my license going and it just seems like such a waste to me to give it up now. I will pathetically stay in the state of denial rather than actually quit because even though I don't give a rats ass about the people in my office, I'd just like to show them how hard I work. What's wrong with me?

I really wasn't ready to come back to work so fast because this job requires a lot of time away from Elle and luckily for me, I have my husband to watch her. But I still hate to take away the one day that we are all home together to come sit at an empty house and "sell" a house. At least its my mom's house and I can just sit by the computer or watch TV if no one comes in.

I'm giving myself until October to see if I'm going to stick with real estate or not. I am really hoping that I win the lottery before then so I don't have to worry about the cost of just keeping my license active without selling anything. That means I dont' have to quit it. Whatever happens, I'll be content in knowing that I gave it a shot and made plenty of money doing it and if I need to give up my license and hire a realtor in the future, well, so be it.