Los Angeles Real Estate Report

Key Takeaways

• →John Barrentine began his real estate career in 1989 in his early 20s after exploring politics in Birmingham, Alabama in 1985-1986, where being openly gay made certain career paths impossible.
• →The Japanese concept of ikigai defines a calling as the intersection of four elements: passion for what you do, skill at doing it, meaningful impact on others' lives, and the ability to earn a living from it.
• →Real estate provided a rare career for gay men in the 1980s where John never had to apologize for who he was and could use his authentic self as an asset rather than a liability.
• →The philosophy 'where you wake up in the morning matters' drives John's approach to residential real estate as a launch pad that determines how clients begin their day and recharge after it.
• →John's father, who knew little about real estate in Alabama where people 'just knocked on the door, shook hands, and bought a house,' suggested combining John's love of architecture, homes, and landscape into a single career.
• →AI and technology represent the biggest shift since John entered the business, offering time savings on menial activities to focus more quality time with clients and families.
• →The real estate industry has completely transformed since 1989, with only two constants remaining through all the changes: houses and people.

The Four Elements That Define a Calling in Real Estate

When you reach a certain point in your career, especially at the beginning of a new year, you start asking the big questions: Am I really satisfied? Is this it? What came to me recently is that I'm happy. I'm happy that I'm happy in my career, in myself, and I'm happy that I've found what sounds like a big crazy thing—I believe that real estate is really my calling.

When we hear about callings, it sounds like some crazy purpose, some giant idea about saving the world. It doesn't have to be that. I started looking into how you define a calling, and what it really came down to is the Japanese idea of ikigai. It's a beautiful way to assess where you are: Are you passionate about what you do? Check. Are you good at what you do? Absolutely. Is what you do meaningful? Can you make a difference in someone's life by doing the thing that you do? Yes. And can you get paid for it? Thank you, and absolutely.

When those things come together as they have for me, I've gone from what was originally just kind of a job to make some money—because when you're young that's what you need to do—to a career where you start thinking, 'Okay, this is cool, I could do this for a while,' to a calling where there's really a higher purpose. I can make a difference in people's lives. Yes, it can be money—getting people more money than they would have gotten otherwise in the sale of a property for an estate or to send children to school because you maximize the value of their asset. But it can also be the intangibles, the small things that make a difference in people's lives.

What I Learned: Where You Wake Up Matters

One of the things we say in our business, our slogan if we were to have one, is 'where you wake up in the morning matters.' Where you wake up is the beginning of your day, and where you wake up matters for everything—for me anyway—for everything that I do in my life. I've got to feel good in the morning when I wake up. I look around and I want to see a certain thing. I want to feel a certain way. I want to be enveloped by a certain energy in my house. I love that, and I've created that. You can create that if you haven't already. You absolutely have the ability to do that.

That's one of the rewarding things about being with people in these intimate settings and situations in the world of residential real estate—you can help people envision that and you can help facilitate them getting that for themselves. That can make a difference in their life because that launch pad for where you wake up in the morning is the way your day begins. Are you going to be able to accomplish what you want to accomplish that day? Can you set out and make a difference for someone else by having the right place to wake up in the morning and having the right energy surrounding you? Can you come back and recharge in a place that's tranquil to you, that is peaceful, that is a place of refuge to recharge your batteries after you've done an amazing thing in a day and made a difference in the world for you, for your family, for your loved ones, for other people, for your clients? All of those things come into play in the world of real estate. I'm so grateful for that in my career.

Finding an Industry That Welcomed My Authentic Self

I wasn't expecting this career path. I wasn't expecting what real estate would become for me. I'm so grateful that for a gay man in the '80s when I began, I found an industry where I could be myself and take advantage of the gifts that I have. What industry will embrace you? Where can you take who you are and use that as a plus and as a real asset and not have to apologize at any point?

I've never apologized at any point in my career for who I am and for what I do and for what I'm good at. There aren't a lot of careers, I think, where you can say that, certainly for gay men of a certain generation. I thought about politics at one point, and then I wasn't going to be the Pete Buttigieg of Birmingham, Alabama in 1985 and 1986. So that went away.

That's been amazing to me, and I'm so grateful to the industry of real estate for that. I want to open doors for other people to be able to do that. I want to take all that I've learned through this career and in this calling and wrap that into a really great package that I can share with other people and make a difference in their lives. I've just come to you today in this video in a place of really amazing gratitude for what I have, who I am, where I am, how I am, and the difference that I know that I have made in the lives of others around me.

The Advice That Changed Everything: Combining What You Love

I fell into real estate when I was in my early 20s, not long out of college. I was that kid with a business degree, journalism, marketing, all of those things, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do with that and nothing spoke to me. I wasn't passionate about anything. It took a couple of years to figure out what I wanted to do. It's hard when you don't feel like you have the luxury of sampling a few things to figure out what it is that you really want to do.

I'm in real estate because of my dad. My father didn't know a lot about real estate. It wasn't something we had in Alabama. People just knocked on the door, shook hands, and bought a house. There weren't real estate agents facilitating any of that. It was very loosely done, and I'm sure there were a lot of issues as a result of that. My dad was like, 'Well, you're looking for something to do and you're great with people'—not always the key to success in real estate, although people think that it is. He said, 'You love architecture, you love homes, you love the landscape. Those are things that you're great at and that you're interested in, so why don't you find something that combines all of those?'

I thought, okay, I'll look at that. And I did, and I never looked back. I started in 1989, and it's certainly not the business I got into. It's a radically different business than the business that I got in, which is the thing that I've enjoyed about it all these years and why I'm never tired of it—because it's always fresh, it's always new. They're houses and they're people. That's the only two things that remain the same through the process. Everything else has changed along the way.

How AI and Technology Are Shaping the Future of Real Estate

When I think about where real estate's going, I think the real opportunities are in the world of AI and technology and how people will approach the business. What do people need generationally? The needs of the baby boomer older client are very different than the millennial client or the Gen Z client. They all want to approach it in a very different way. That's interesting to me, and there are a lot of ways to approach the business these days.

AI has sped everything up, of course, in our world of residential real estate as in everything else. The things I'm looking forward to are probably AI-based and how, for us, we'll make things more accessible, we'll make things more meaningful to our clients, we'll propel our business in a way that we can deliver a greater experience at the end of the day. We'll save time on menial activities so that we can focus more on the quality time with our clients and being with our people and certainly with our families and our friends.

I see AI as a time savings and as a tool to leverage ourselves into greater and greater relationships with our clients and with those around us. This video is for anyone thinking about residential real estate as a career and as a calling, but it's also for anyone that has an entrepreneurial spirit in any way and wants to step out and find something they're passionate about, build a business and a career and a life around that while making a difference in the lives of the people they serve. I hope this is inspiring in some way to take the risk to step out and figure out what's next for you and what brings together the intersection of a career, a job, your passion and purpose all at once. I think it's an amazing place to be, and I think it takes a moment to get there. So enjoy the ride.

Chuck Marquardt’s Perspective

“I've worked alongside John for years and what you see in this video is exactly who he is every single day. Real estate is not a job for him. The clients feel that. The difference between someone who shows up because they have to and someone who shows up because they genuinely love what they do — buyers and sellers feel that difference immediately, and it changes every outcome.”

The Ikigai Framework — Applied to Real Estate

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