When someone first dives into the world of real estate, it can be easy to find it overwhelming. From choosing the right house to understanding the buying process, to financing options…it’s not surprising that many people just decide against the journey. This doesn’t have to be the case. In fact, Michelle Vega has spent a lot of her career ensuring that all have equal opportunity and possibilities when beginning a real estate journey.
Hailing from the heart of New Jersey, Michelle is no stranger to hard work. From helping manage her grandmother’s flower shop, to holding down two part time jobs during high school, she has proved over and over that she’s not afraid to put in the effort needed to succeed. After graduating and moving to North Carolina and working in a collections company, she applied this same work ethic into getting her real estate license and starting a new career. Seeing self-employment as the only way to fully realize her potential, she put her heart into it and got to work.
Michelle Vega’s motivation for making it big in the real estate field wasn’t just so that she could become a successful entrepreneur. She was also hoping to help a demographic that she’d seen underrepresented in the business world: those struggling to get a start in life. Years before getting her real estate license, Michelle remembers being interested in buying a home of her own. She did the research and found a home that drew her interest. With hopes high, she called the listing agent for direction on the next steps to take. The agent asked her if she had pre-approval from a bank, and when she told him she didn’t, he said, “Find one,” and hung up. Michelle set her phone down in confusion. She’d been expecting information, guidance, or really anything besides a flat-out denial.
Later in her life, when she entered the real estate field, she vowed to attend to a portion of the market that she felt was being neglected. She realized that there were people everywhere that had the same questions she’d had, and were being largely ignored because of the extra work it would take to guide them through the complete process of owning their own property. With this goal in mind, she began focusing on the groups of people who needed extra assistance to get ahead – people who hadn’t had the chance to develop a high credit score, people with student loans, people with pending immigration statuses…etc.
She invested the same amount of dedication into these lives as she’d put into her own, and immediately began to see results. In 2019 alone, Michelle Vega sold 130 houses on her own. Her success caused her to realize that she wanted to share her processes with others, and in 2020, she began to gather together her own team. The team itself experienced swift growth, with Michelle giving everyone an equal opportunity to join regardless of age, race, or gender. Their goal was to create more jobs, and reach a large number of families who needed assistance. Within their first year of team operation i.e., 2020 – they sold 230 houses. Only part of the way through 2021, they surpassed this number with 300 houses sold, and counting. But the real joy of their work isn’t that they’ve become so successful in real estate, it’s in the knowledge of the fact that over 90% of these homes have been bought by first time home buyers, and those immigrating from other countries. This ability to help families start a life is what Michelle Vega truly loves about her work.
“I love the ability to change lives. If I help a single mom today, making $13/hr buy her own house, even if it’s not the dream home, she can make an investment in her family’s future”, Michelle says. Her clients will find that, unlike many other agents, she doesn’t shy away from any extra work that may be necessary to get them started, she revels in it, and will put all of her effort into helping them get ahead in life.
