Grace Hudtloff’s day starts at 5:30 a.m., no alarm needed.
The real estate agent begins with e-mails and lists: Of phone calls. Properties she’ll view. What her three assistants will do with their day – set appointments, research properties, complete paperwork.
By 9 a.m. on a recent Tuesday, Hudtloff sits in her University Place office. Shelves overhead hold framed pictures of her 10 grandchildren and sales trophies.
Hudtloff works through names and numbers hooked to a clipboard, making calls.
“The sport court, does that sit on your property?”
“What did you think of your tour around Gig Harbor?”
“There have been two other showings, so they’re holding off on lowering the price.”
Within the hour, Hudtloff is backing her two-door BMW, a convertible, out of the John L. Scott lot to present an offer.
“It’s not the most practical car for real estate, but it’s the one I’ve always had,” she says.
Except for the year and a half she drove a four-door:
“I was totally bored. I traded it in.”
The success of Hudtloff, who’s been a real estate agent for 27 years, rests largely on referrals. She works with buyers and sellers and often represents both sides of the transaction.
Today, Hudtloff has 54 properties listed for sale, priced from $156,000 to $4.9 million. She has 63 prospective buyers for whom she’s seeking properties.
Her clipboard balances on the console, and she writes on it with the phone tucked to her ear. She steers with her left hand. Most times, she doesn’t wear a seat belt.
By 10:15, she’s sitting at a dining room table in Steilacoom with Lou Dunkin, 91, who’s selling lots on a hillside cul-de-sac.
They talk about financing and a feasibility contingency and builders. Hudtloff, who keeps on her coat, takes Dunkin through several signatures.
Next up, a three-bedroom University Place house Hudtloff will be listing.
She walks through the home in less than three minutes.
“The only concern would be the main road there, but for a little rambler in University Place it will probably sell for under $300,000,” she says.
At 11:20, she pops in to an agent open house hosted by one of her assistants. Hudtloff mingles and eats one-quarter of a Costco muffin, her lunch that afternoon.
Fifteen minutes later, she’s outside a North Tacoma home she expects to list.
“What I look at is, what’s that right next to it? I think that’s an apartment, but I’ll find out.”
Hudtloff says she charges most sellers a 2.5 percent commission, in line with the national average. Marketing is included and can consist of fliers, a virtual Web tour, print ads and direct mail to other agents.
Back at the office, she begins a market analysis on a 9,000-square-foot house in Gig Harbor.
“This is a really tough one. Because it’s such a large home, a beautiful home on acreage without a view,” she says. No view makes it difficult to find similar properties and prices for comparison.
Hudtloff scans stats on 26 nearby homes, then lists of acreage-only properties and large homes sold or selling for more than $700,000.
“A lot of them you just have to come up with a gut feeling. What will a buyer pay for it? A lot of it is based on experience working in that market,” she says.
She decides on a range of $1.5 million to $1.7 million.
Her afternoon ends with a wire basket filled with what she carts home at night. On this day, she grabs phone messages and three market analyses.
“It’s a long day,” she says. “Once I get home, I usually don’t check my e-mails until the morning.”
