From market surveyor to leadership

My first job in real estate had no office and no leads. I was a market surveyor at Ayat Real Estate — out in the city every day, finding people who might buy a home, and finding out why the people who did not buy, did not.

Nobody teaches you a market faster than the market itself. In the field you hear the real objections, not the polite ones. Price is what people say first. Trust, timing, family, and the exchange rate are usually what they mean.

From surveyor I became a supervisor. Then I left to build my own agency, Hamona, and for three years I carried every part of the machine: finding developers, hiring and training agents, designing commissions, and answering for the number at the end of every month. Owning the company teaches you what no employee ever sees — what a sale actually costs, and why good products die on weak sales floors.

Today I lead sales and marketing at Temer Properties, one of the larger residential developers in Addis Ababa. Across all three seats, teams I have built and led have closed more than a thousand homes.

I keep the old job title in my story on purpose. ከሰርቬየርነት እስከ አመራር — from market surveying to leadership — because the surveyor's habit is still the whole method: go to the ground, ask until the real answer shows up, and never sell against what you heard there.