Before You Sell Your House, Watch This | Smart Renovation & Pricing Strategy

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Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Q Edmonds interviews Cherie Hardy, a seasoned real estate professional with over 30 years of experience. Cherie shares her journey from her first investment property to her current focus on short-term rentals and helping homeowners transition in their lives. Throughout the conversation, she emphasizes the importance of resilience, relationship building, and mentorship in achieving success in the real estate industry. Cherie also discusses the significance of community involvement and the Southern charm that helps her connect with clients.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Cherie Hardy’s Website
    • Cherie Hardy on LinkedIn
    • Cherie Hardy’s Phone Number: (843) 902-1593
    • Cherie Hardy’s Email: [email protected]

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Cherie’ Hardy (00:00)
  So I’m always constantly looking because I’ve had other businesses and sold them in the past. And you want with anything you do that’s an investment, you want to make it scalable so you can turn around and sell it. I think that’s

  most people’s biggest mistake, whether it’s a rental property or if it’s a business, you want to make that your end goal should be trying to sell it.

  Quentin (01:54)
  Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I’m excited today. I have a fantastic guest. This lady, listen, like she was an investor for, you know, bought her first property 30 years ago, interior design. Listen, she is a specialist in real estate. She come with years of experience. And so I am so excited because she’s going to let me pick her brain about the experience for a little bit. And so I am…

  Super excited to introduce you all to, let me take my time, Cherie Hardy.

  How you doing today, my dear?

  Cherie’ Hardy (02:34)
  I’m doing great.

  Quentin (02:35)
  That’s great. That’s great. Listen, I’m glad you’re here. Excited to do this podcast episode with you. And I want to dive right in. I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. If you want to give us a little bit of an origin story of kind of how you got into real estate, we love origin stories. And then if you don’t mind, tell us what part of the world you’re in. So your main focus, your origin story and where you are. And my dear, you have the floor.

  Cherie’ Hardy (03:01)
  Well, my name is Cherie Hardy, like you said, and I’m in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We get about 25 million visitors here every summer. I basically started in real estate in Winston-Salem. I had my own investment property. I got a diploma in interior design and started selling for basically builders.

  And then we moved to Myrtle Beach about 20 years ago. And during that time, for 13 years of that, I did own my own company. And I’ve done every aspect of real estate from commercial to new construction, first time home buyers, everything. I never thought of myself as a salesperson. And I’ve always just wanted to help people, whether it was the 13,000.

  dollar land deal up to, you know, a $5 million listing like I have now. So, and I just really like helping people. And I know that I grew as I dug in and learned more about the industry. And I guess my biggest regret is I didn’t speak to some people sooner to get other input to be able to pick their brains.

  Quentin (04:16)
  Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Thank you for taking us through the journey, letting us know where you are now, giving us a little bit of your resume, what you’ve been involved in. absolutely love it. And you just said something that caught my eye and I wrote it down. You said, I grew as I dug in. And I wrote that down because I always say destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning no matter what we go through in life, it teaches us something about ourself that make us who we are now.

  And so I would love to know throughout your journey, your destinations, your stops in real estate, what has it taught you about you? Has it taught you resilience, discipline, stick to it in this? Like what has this industry taught you about yourself?

  Cherie’ Hardy (05:47)
  I won’t quit. If I don’t know, I dig in and I look for the resources to make me better. And like we discussed earlier, you know, I, as far as competition goes, I’ve always thought of myself as the competition and to make myself better and better as I grew. As far as my destination goes, right now, there’s so many various aspects of real estate. When I was,

  broker in charge of my own company. I talked to a lot of agents and I said, you cannot be good at everything. You need to focus on what you love because if you don’t love cold calling, you’re not going to be successful at it. You know, I like it as a game, but my goal right now and I have film as my niche is two things. Short-term rentals. I’ve actually worked for one of the biggest short-term rentals in our market that had over 1500.

  Reynolds and I was a project manager designer and helped them with other aspects of their business. And I am also helping people that are transitioning to the next phase of their life, whether it’s working, staying in an independent living or being moved to a nursing home or whatever. A lot of these houses I find are distressed and need a lot of TLC.

  The one I just finished up and got on the market, when I walked in there, I seen that, you know, if I listed it, will be 350 in our market. But if they spend a little money, which we ended up spending about 60,000, we’ve listed it now for 550,000. So instead of letting an investor flip that property, I’ve…

  I’m working with the homeowners that don’t live in the area so they can get that and just do the things that need to be done. Cause I think a lot of times it’s better to speak with a real estate professional before you list your house, even six months out, because you’re going to have the opportunity to say, Hey, if I do this, I’m not going to get a return on my money. You know, where I can see those things. And there was just really a couple little things we did in that place that made a total transformation.

  because it was in 2003 and it had the double island and then it had this bar across the top with some plants sitting up there. So we got rid of all that, brought in your quartz countertops and made a big difference.

  Quentin (08:20)
  Yeah, I love it. I love how you talked about your grit and your tenacity. I like how you said like, your most competition is yourself, right? I always tell people the inner me is my enemy, right? It’s me against me. You know what I’m saying? And so I love that. And I love just everything you’re doing, how you’re focusing on helping people. And with you, with years of experience, I love asking this question. It’s not to put you on the spot, but you and I both know that sometimes deals go sideways.

  Right? Sometimes we have to fast. So I want to know how has adversity looked for you? Have you faced some adversity and how did you overcome

  Cherie’ Hardy (09:00)
  I try to plan ⁓ and ⁓ I try to be educated about the situation like if you came here and you bought a piece of property from now There’s a couple things I have in play over the years I’ve set up like we don’t do a closing but Tuesday Wednesday or Thursday because guess what I’ve had clients that wanted to close on a Friday and then they didn’t close so then they had to pay for the moving truck I guess the funniest

  Quentin (09:02)
  Mmm.

  Cherie’ Hardy (09:28)
  story that was one of my that just really stands out is dealing especially in it. We have an international airport here and we have a lot of people from all over the world that come to the Myrtle Beach area. But this actually happened to me in Winston-Salem before I moved. I had sold a new house to a Brazilian lady and we were sitting at closing. Everything was going great and the attorney decided to say something that she didn’t like.

  And the attorney said, well, most Americans don’t know how to budget. So that’s why we do escrows. Well, she was insulted and she would not close until the bank redid her documents and she didn’t have to pay escrows. So we can’t prepare for everything, but you just got to move forward and you got to learn from it to move on.

  Quentin (10:57)
  I love it. Your ability to be able to pivot and adapt. absolutely love it. Again, you said you’re great. You’re going to dig in. And I absolutely love it. That’s a great story. And I appreciate you sharing. Let me ask you this. What is your next real goal? Like, what are you looking to solve a scale next?

  Cherie’ Hardy (11:16)
  probably continue to build a new team. I’ve had teams in the past, so I can scale the business a little bit better. I’ve recently added some great software to make everything a little bit easier to grow a team.

  So I’m always constantly looking because I’ve had other businesses and sold them in the past. And you want with anything you do that’s an investment, you want to make it scalable so you can turn around and sell it. I think that’s

  most people’s biggest mistake, whether it’s a rental property or if it’s a business, you want to make that your end goal should be trying to sell it.

  So you don’t let your condo run down for 20 years and never do anything to it because you’re not going to get a great rate of return on it. So you want to constantly be updating it and looking for that end goal.

  Quentin (12:10)
  good pearls, good wisdom, good wisdom. Let me ask you, I hear you love to help people and I believe that’s your through line. That’s what I believe is one of the keys to your success. And so I want to talk a little bit about relationships. I would love to know your perspective on relationship building. Has relationships served you well? Like what is your perspective and outlook on building and maintaining relationships?

  Cherie’ Hardy (12:38)
  Well, it’s definitely important. I’ve been here for 20 years and most of my business is clients from the past or clients who have recommended me to new clients. So it’s very important that you stay in touch with those people, whether it’s through a CRM system or, and you have your special clients that you click with and you carry on long-term relationships with.

  I mean, I’ve made a lot of good friends over the years and like I just listed a property and getting ready to once we get an offer on it to sell them another property and I sold them their house 16 years ago. So I think it’s really important to keep those good relationships going and being active in the community. served on Salvation Army on the board for eight years, four years I was the chairperson.

  So just constantly being involved in your community and giving back, I think is really important. That’s why a lot of people do keep me at the front of mind.

  Quentin (13:41)
  Absolutely, I love it. And you got to tell me, because I think you would be apt to answer this question. What is it about the Southern charm that is so alluring? Like, why is it that you guys can just pull people in? Tell me what’s the superpower behind the Southern charm?

  Cherie’ Hardy (13:55)
  Well, I didn’t tell you this earlier, but I was born in Savannah, Georgia. So I’m as Southern as you’re going to get. Well, I think my biggest asset is having a great, great grandmother that just loved everybody. And she always said, treat people the way you want to be treated. And, ⁓ you know, and plus the big thing with Southerner

  Quentin (14:02)
  Exactly!

  ⁓

  Yeah.

  Cherie’ Hardy (14:24)
  southern women especially, is we can say bless your heart and you don’t even know we’re being ugly.

  Quentin (14:26)
  Especially, yeah.

  It can mean so many different things. bless your heart. Bless your heart. You hear so many words, right No, I get it. I get it. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love it. Well, listen, is there any topic that I have not yet to bring up that you want to talk about? Or and is there any other words of motivation, education or inspiration that you want to leave people? Either one of those or both of them, I would love to hear.

  Cherie’ Hardy (14:38)
  Yeah.

  Well, number one would be, I feel like what’s made me successful over my years in the industry is I’ve used a coach and a mentor in the past. One time it was in the industry and two other times it really wasn’t in the industry, but it’s about processes and procedures. And if you don’t know an area, find somebody that knows the area and somebody that you

  feel like you can trust. And I think that’s been one of my biggest assets is when people come to town, whether you were relocating your family and wanted to know about the school system, I can answer those questions for you. I even look at the jobs on a regular basis, what’s available here. So I can help people relocate to the market. And unfortunately, my industry is there’s most people don’t last in real estate, but about three years.

  And if you can find somebody who’s got excellent reviews and been in a market for a long time, that is gonna be your best bet. Whether you’re in Tampa or Austin or wherever you go, look for that expert. Ask them questions. It displays my mind how people, even when I go to other markets, I look and compare a lot of things I do to like,

  Austin and Tampa and out in California because a lot of times things trends start on the West Coast and move to the East Coast. I worked for a company out of California during COVID in a couple years about three years total. There was a national company and they got bought out by another national company. So it’s very important. And you know what, if you have a great agent you work with in your market, they can find you a good agent.

  I helped my, I just helped my nephew buy a house in Charlotte and I wasn’t even in the market, but I found him a great agent that was going to take care of him. And I’ve done this for people all over the United States.

  Quentin (17:49)
  I love it. love it. Well, shout out to your grandmom for raising you the way she did and stealing that Southern charm that just seems to come so natural. Because I can hear your through line is that you really want to help people, that you really connect people, helping your nephew, just helping people through referral that keep coming back. I mean, it’s just exceptional how great you are and good you are at building relationships and sustaining relationships. So I appreciate you so much. Speaking of relationships.

  If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you?

  Cherie’ Hardy (18:26)
  Well, the best way to get a hold of me is my cell number, which is 843-902-1593. And I’ve just started my company again. I work, my real estate company with somebody else, but you can go to info, I-N-F-O, at Plain, P-L-A-I-N, then in simple, S-I-M-P-L-E, design.com. So [email protected]

  Quentin (18:56)
  I love it. I love it. Well, listen, I want to say three things to you. First, I want to thank you for your time because you know time is valuable. You can do whatever you want to do with your time, but you was here with us. So thank you for your time. Two, thank you for your story. Thank you for your authenticity. Thank you for your integrity and the way you told your story and the way you lead your life. I tell people all the time that we impact people with our stories. We can take things from people and we can use them in our lives to really help us.

  not make mistakes or even just propel us forward. So thank you for that. And lastly, thank you for your perspective. Thank you for your mindset and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you today.

  Cherie’ Hardy (19:36)
  Well, I appreciate you too. Thank you for your time.

  Quentin (19:39)
  Thank you. I’m glad you didn’t give me a bless your heart. I thought she was about to drop one in the morning. I was preparing myself, but no, I appreciate you so much.

  Cherie’ Hardy (19:42)
  I haven’t

  done that maybe three or four times.

  Quentin (19:50)
  Gosh,

  absolutely, absolutely. But listen, you’ve heard the value, you got the value. Check the show notes, check out Miss Hardy. But definitely make sure you are subscribed here, because I keep telling you, we’re going to bring up amazing people just like Miss Hardy. So thank you so much. And everyone else, we’ll see you on the next time.