Your Guide Through the Real Estate Jungle - a new series
Are you thinking of selling your house or apartment and don't know how to start? We have some practical advice for you on how to prepare your property for sale. If you're wondering how to sell an apartment without a broker, or don't know how to choose a real estate agency, we have a selection of valuable tips for you, too. Are you also interested in how the coronavirus will affect the real estate market, how the pandemic will affect AirbNb, or why some properties are unsaleable? In the Your Guide Through the Real Estate Jungle series, we will talk as openly as possible about how real estate market prices are made and whether price maps can be trusted. Your ideas about how the real estate market works - versus our facts.
Who will be your guide through the real estate jungle?
My name is Elena Jakubovic and today I will not sing or dance and you will not see my beautiful colleagues from Y&T Luxury Property either. I’m here with episode zero of the series "Your Guide to the Real Estate Jungle".
I actually started my real estate agency by chance. The year was 2010 and I wanted to try my luck in a new field. Radovan Vítek recommended me to interview for a job with his partner, who had a well-known real estate agency. When he asked me during the interview what I wanted to sell, I enthusiastically said "villas", and he went like - ah, we have another lady for that. He told me I didn't have what it takes to succeed in this field. I cried for 2 days… and then, a few weeks later, an acquaintance of mine offered me his villa to sell. I considered it a hobby, until people started offering me their own real estate to sell when I was giving them a tour... And the hobby developed into the dream job it is now.
Where do I come from?
As you can hear, I have a slight accent; I was born in Kiev into a Czech family, so I take my work in Prague as return home. Since 2010, I have been building a purely Czech real estate agency here, a team consisting exclusively of women. I do believe that there are fine brokers among men, too. But we've had our all-female concept since the very start, when the agency consisted of four women and the first article about us received a lot of positive reviews.
Why do we dance in our spots?
You’ve probably noticed our dancing spots on the internet. You know, we can afford to have fun and even sing in our commercials, because we know that nobody on the market will find a more ideal buyer for your property, and we also have the largest offer for those who are looking for a new place to live.
What will you learn in this series?
In the series "Your Guide Through the Real Estate Jungle", you will learn how to sell or buy real estate at a profit, how to read market research numbers, what to avoid and who to watch out for.
Why Prague?
I have always felt an attachment to Czech culture, and I've been hearing Czech at home since I was little. I first came to Prague when I was seven years old, and since then it has been etched in my heart, as though I had known I would come back one day.
It's a funny coincidence that the first property I tried to sell, the place that inspires me, and at the same time the place where I first failed because someone else sold it, was located in Prague.
But that's an everyday thing in this field, you have to learn to cope with defeat on a daily basis.
I didn't manage to sell my first house, but I entered the most prestigious branch of tangible property trading - real estate!
What was 2020 like for us and what can we expect in 2021?
It was a year of big changes and, for us, also a year of digitization of processes, which we had started in 2019.
There are opinions that Covid will purge individual fields of weaker and less qualified players, but we are already watching companies that were healthy and successful before Covid fail. The real estate business is no exception. Even though we don't cooperate with other real estate agencies, we know that they are going through difficult times.
What does real estate business mean to me?
For me, real estate is a combination of architecture, history, business and life.
I enjoy helping people find their home and value their property by selling it successfully.
Four years ago, we founded the online magazine LP-Life.com, and in 2020 the endowment fund "Our Lungs"; in 2021 we are preparing other new projects related to our field.
