Selling Real Estate Successfully Means Surviving The Lean Times

Accomplishment: ``The fat lady hasn't sung on that one yet. I don't feel we have accomplished our goal.'' That goal, Pavach, 47, says, is to enter the 1990s with the right tools for the decade and to be a more successful, fun place to work. Advance Properties sells about $240 million a year in residential real estate.

Quote: ``Look at what other successful people do, then work harder at it than they do. . . . Whatever you focus on you may well achieve, so do some planning on what that should be.''

Secret: ``I hope you're not disappointed with hard work and planning.'' A little luck also played a role for Pavach. ``When Advance Properties came up for sale, I already knew its background,'' he says. (Pavach had been a real estate sales agent there before purchasing the company in 1988.)

Owning Advance Properties has been a challenge, he says. ``Anybody in 1989 could have made money in real estate, but 1990 was more difficult. Surviving and going forward was tough for anyone in the industry. We were successful and will be in the future.''

Advance Properties, he says, has 300 agents and eight offices concentrated in North King and Snohomish counties.

It also has an associated real estate management firm, insurance agency and mortgage company.

``We are not a franchise and don't have any partners, so there's nobody to blame if things go wrong.''

Setback: ``Accomplishing some of this and looking back and saying it wasn't any fun. We went through a very difficult market.''

Advice: Understand that you're working for your associates and that serving them and making them more successful is the real job,'' he says. ``You have to understand that they don't work for you, you work for them.''