Santiago Arana realizes that real estate is all about playing the long game. And even if it seems like no clients are transacting, it is important to stay visible and top-of-mind.
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Many industry folks by now have heard luxury agent Santiago Arana’s inspiring story of moving from Bolivia to achieve the American Dream, then working his way up to the upper echelons of luxury real estate from starting off waiting tables in LA.
But what’s less known is that Arana’s success story did not end there: He’s consistently one of the highest earners at The Agency, the firm founded by celebrity agent Mauricio Umansky.
Santiago Arana | The Agency
Part of the secret to his success is that Arana realizes that real estate is all about playing the long game, he told Inman.
“Don’t get into this business if you think that it’s a quick money kind of thing,” Arana said during a recent interview. “It’s a marathon, right? You can have an amazing year, and then you can have two years that are not great. The last three years in the industry have been difficult.”
Here’s how Arana stays on top of his game, even during tough markets, more than a decade into his career.
Facing headwinds
Like everyone else across the country, agents at The Agency — like Arana — faced economic headwinds this year in the form of elevated interest rates, tariffs and a general uncertainty over shifting policies.
But in addition to that, agents who operate in Arana’s market of Los Angeles dealt with catastrophic wildfires and their aftermath and luxury clients and developers who have been reluctant to adapt to a so-called mansion tax that went into effect in Spring 2023. That legislation added a 4 percent seller-paid tax on homes that sold for more than $5 million and a 5.5 percent tax on homes that sold for over $10 million.
“For me and the agents that work in my area, it’s been very difficult because it’s a longer list of ‘what else?'” Arana said. “With the mansion tax, people feel like they don’t want to sell because they don’t want to pay that tax. So that has diminished the number of transactions substantially.
“The interest rates also make people not want to sell because right now they are paying mortgages on a rate that is somewhere around 3 percent, and if they sell, even though they might want to move, they don’t want to go into a much higher interest rate. So all those things make a market difficult as a real estate agent.”
But when he faces a down year, Arana said, it motivates him to plan for how he can make the next year better, including by leaning into marketing and advertising, even when it seems like few clients are buying and selling.
Staying visible and pushing harder
Maintaining visibility even during a down market is what helps clients think of you once the market shifts and they’re ready to transact again, Arana said.
“Although a lot of people don’t advertise in the paper anymore, I always have [ads] in there because of the consistency that people look for,” he told Inman. “They’re looking at it, and then all of a sudden, when the markets are better, when the interest rates are lowering, they’re going to start saying, ‘Maybe it’s time to sell now. Oh, and that guy, Santiago, I see his name every single day in things — he was busy during the bad times.'”
Eventually, people will begin to equate your name with success if you just keep busy and stay in front of your clients, Arana added.
“That’s what happened to me during the 2008-2009 crisis,” he said. “I pushed harder. I was sitting open houses both days of the weekend. I was pushing harder, I was putting it out there, and then all of a sudden, in 2012, when things started to change, my phone didn’t stop ringing.”
Worrying about the things you can control
There are so many factors in real estate that agents have zero control over, which can be maddening. Instead of allowing those things to make you spiral with frustration, it’s important to instead focus on the factors you can control, Arana said.
“You cannot control the interest rates, you’re not going to control natural disasters, you’re not going to control what the Feds are doing, you’re not going to control how the economy is — you’re not going to control any of that,” Arana said. “So what I do personally is I try not to be inundated with the bad news.”
Arana said his TV is only connected to Apple TV+ so that he can watch movies or shows to relax, but he avoids cable and network TV so that the negativity does not drag him down.
What he can control is how many open houses he hosts in a weekend, how often he gets in front of his clients and how he remains accountable to himself.
“Get busy,” Arana advised. “Get out there, get in front of people, go to events. Wherever you can be in front of people, let them know that this is what you do. Open houses, to me, are the best because in open houses, you’re going to meet people there looking for houses. If you go to a bar and talk about how you sell real estate, you might need to talk to 20 people to end up with one who maybe wants to buy or sell a house.”
Agents can also control how they prep for a new year, Arana added. Starting in November, he said agents should begin building their business plan for the next year, and include goals and milestones that can be broken down monthly or quarterly.
“Then, you start scheduling based on that plan,” Arana said. “Because, like Tony Robbins says, if you don’t schedule it, it’s not real.”
Email Lillian Dickerson
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