highest honor
greater albuquerque association of realtors® two decades of sales and service seal award
In a way, JoLynn Kniffin got her start selling homes by actually selling fish.
As a young adult, Kniffin was an owner of a salt-water fish store and she sold various varieties to Doyle Pargin, founder of Pargin Realty, which has since become ERA Sellers and Buyers Real Estate.
“He had a fish tank in the office and one in his home and he used to come in to buy fish all the time,” Kniffin said. “After about six months, he told me you have to come work for me, you have to.”
It was not an easy decision to cut bait on the fish, but it’s turned out to be a great decision.
“I didn’t think I’d like it,” she said. “I was 24 when I got licensed and I’ve been with the same company the whole time.”
For her work and years of dedication to the industry, Kniffin recently was named the REALTOR® of the Year by the Greater Albuquerque Association of REALTORS®.
“It’s a huge honor,” she said. “I never thought I had done enough to deserve that kind of award. It’s voted on by past recipients, so they choose the winner based on nominations. So I was blown away.”
It may have come as a surprise to Kniffin, but the honor was well deserved, said Danny Wm. Vigil, president of the GAAR board of directors.
“She’s an individual whose contributions to the industry, her contributions to the committees she served on, were so many that we couldn’t list them all on the program,” he said. “She's made a huge contribution to the association.”
What’s more, she’s had a big impact within her own office as a qualifying broker.
“All of the brokers in her office who she supervises have a tremendous amount of respect,” Vigil said. “She’s really well-liked and she’s a great person. She treats everybody fairly.”
Kniffin was first licensed in 1997 and thanks to strong guidance from her mentors, quickly realized that she had what it takes to be successful in the business.
“It’s funny, I was the youngest in the company for many, many years,” she said. “Doyle didn’t used to hire new agents. And I felt like a rookie forever. The training and the people of the company helped me get my career started. The key to it all was integrity. All of that just laid the groundwork on how I would continue to do my business and how I would work in this field for the last 20 years.”
Of course, Kniffin didn’t just slip into a REALTORS® jacket and immediately start selling homes. It took work, perseverance and the ability to develop her own style.
“It’s always tough, establishing a new business,” she said. “When you’re in sales, it’s a real people and relationship business. But most people treat it as a sales job but you have to cultivate relationships because people don’t remember you after they’ve been in their house for five or 10 years. The trust is what brings them back to you and brings their business back to you and their referrals. It’s a real hands-on business and that’s where the company has been really helpful. The staff and management have always been very helpful.”
Likewise, GAAR has been instrumental in helping her career progress through its education programs and ability to help REALTORS® stay informed about the latest trends in the business.
It’s what led her to decide to work on helping the organization as much as possible.
“I started volunteering when I was an agent,” Kniffin said. “That was the premise for the culture of our office-to give back whenever I could. GAAR is an organization run primarily by volunteers so they’re always looking for people to give back and I always thought that was important.”
Kniffin sits on the southwest Multiple Listing Service board of directors, a post she has held on and off for many years; she sits on the GAAR board of directors; she is a board of directors member for the REALTORS® Association of New Mexico; she chaired the grievance committee last year and has been on the committee for the better part of a decade, and she chairs GAAR’s Run for the Zoo committee.
"I like seeing agents grow into a career and be successful." jolynn kniffin
“As a qualifying broker, I feel it’s really important to stay in tune with what’s happening with the local association,” she said. “And with the MLS board that I sit on, it’s about keeping in touch nationally with what’s happening and trying to protect our business and protect our members and give that insight to my brokers and my company. I think it’s important to stay in touch.”
In 2010, Kniffin was recruited to her position as qualifying broker, taking her away from the day-to-day buying and selling of homes and into a supervisory capacity, overseeing up to 60 REALTORS® to help make their jobs easier and more rewarding.
“I supervise, I coach and I deal with retention and recruiting within the company,” she said. “The biggest thing is one-on-one coaching. I work with them to try to elevate their business and to meet their goals.”
It also means bring the agents together for team building, Kniffin said.
“We do a lot of collaborative –type classes and work together within the company,” she said. “The sales meeting and classes are kind of morphed together. I used to teach a lot more but I work now in both our east and west offices. My job besides that is primarily putting out fires, helping agents putting out fires. If something is getting sideways in a transaction and it’s not clear what to do, like a dispute over earnest money or over reporting information, it’s my job is to help them problem solve and keep the transaction on track.”
It’s far more satisfying than she originally thought it would be.
“I absolutely love it,” Kniffin said. “Every once in a while, a family member or a friend who wants to buy or sell a house will ask me to do it. But I tell them, ‘Let me give you to an agent that I know will do a good job.’ Watching one of my agents take over a transaction that came to me is really cool to watch. My favorite thing is I like watching new agents grow it into a career and be successful and they get it. They get all the aspects of what it takes to bring together a transaction. It’s so rewarding and I’ve really enjoyed it a lot.”