Transforming the Real Estate Arena | Sunnie Li

Sunnie Li

Co-Founder

Real estate has always been Sunnie Li’s front and center passion. She started investing in real estate when she was still in college, pursuing her bachelor’s in public Affair and Governance. And it had been a long journey from that to founding SALA Homes in 2019. “When I founded SALA Homes, integrity and data were most important to me. You must be honest in the real estate business. There is no way around it. For the over 600 clients that I have helped over the years, 99% of them came to me by referrals,” she explains. “Honesty always pays. The other half of my approach is data. Real estate is a business as old as human civilization itself. So, when I decided to commit myself to real estate, I wasn’t going to be just another real estate agent. Our times have been changed by technology in countless ways. I was in the nucleus of it all, the Silicon Valley. I thought it was time to breathe some new air into the ancient profession.”

The diverse backgrounds of the four other female founders equally reﬂect SALA’s fresh approach to real estate. All ﬁve founders are women in their 30’s and 40’s. They face significant work and life balance problems, especially where their families are concerned. Real Estate is a service sector, and it gets very competitive. “Very often, we have to be available on demand and work odd hours. We are the busiest when normal people are taking their time off. There are no off days in real estate. We have to work with our clients. But balancing family life with work can be hard. And we had struggled for a long time over this,” says Sunnie. “I’m very grateful for the support I have from my family. Every one of our partners has to be very effcient in fulﬁlling her role both in work and in life. That includes taking care of the children, balancing the relationship with our parents and spouses, and at the same time saving enough time for work.” For example, the founders would take their children to open houses and let them do their homework there. Some of the events they host are also family-oriented so that they could bring their children and families. Because this is a female-founded company, Sunnie and her co-founders understand the challenges each other faces and give their support accordingly.

Becoming an Inspiration

Sunnie and her founders are inspiring and empowering team members to become great leaders of tomorrow. They don’t want to limit their imagination. “The reason, I think, a lot of women are in the real estate business is that they want ﬂexibility in their work. They give up their full time job to become a realtor or an agent because they want to take care of their families. And they will always prioritize their families and give up work when needed,” elucidates Sunnie. “That does not have to be the only way. We don’t want JUST to be agents. We want to achieve something bigger. Although we do buy and sell real estate at SALA Homes, what we do is much more than that. We created many more job opportunities. The relationship we create with our clients goes beyond mere showing and buying homes.” It’s a life-long bond involving real estate needs, tax planning, investing, fund management, rental management, design, and even construction.

According to Sunnie, SALA is still striving for the better. To be a better self, to serve more people, to improve the industry, and in doing so, hopefully, to make the world a little better place. “We want to make the city a better place, to allow more people to live in beautiful houses and enjoy their lives. So my advice is this: Believe in yourself. Don’t be swayed by the naysayers who think you should get a more stable job or be with your family or have children. Only pursue what you believe in.”

Building A Company

It is pertinent to mention that the real estate market has undergone two transformations in the last 30 years. The ﬁrst transformation was when the information, with the emergence of Redﬁn, Zillow, and the like, became a lot more transparent. This limited the middleman’s ability to use private information as leverage to proﬁt. The onset of new startups brought about the next transformation. They employed strategies such as the iBuyer model to smoothen the transaction even more. iBuyer model means the business buys the house directly from the seller and then later sells it to a buyer, thus breaking down the transaction. “We caught up on this trend, including building our own website. But at the same time, we tried to further streamline the process, including helping clients make cash offers, providing trade-in program for the sellers,” she adds. “These are all the new ways we are exploring, which have been evidently appreciated by our clients. But making the industry become more effcient goes beyond transactions.”

The introduction of new technologies also helped in the development and construction. To use development as an example. Because of the housing shortage in California, the government has been encouraging new developments and updated policies on lot use and land use. SALA was one of the ﬁrst companies that studied and adopted these policies. Like the SB9 Act, which they experimented on with their lots as soon as they passed last year. They worked with different cities to ﬁnd ways to build more housing to ease the shortage. The company explored many innovations in construction, such as pre-fab, which made houses in a factory before replacing them with lots. To further lower the cost and improve the effciency, they also took advantage of their Chinese background and incorporated overseas resources in the supply chain and raw material needs.

Sunnie is proud of the certain achievements of SALA. In the realty part, in the past year, the company helped over 200 families either buy their ideal houses or sell their old houses at satisfactory prices. And in this process, what differentiated SALA from the traditional realty practice is that they employed cash offer and trade-in program, two types of ﬁnancial leveraging. Referrals gained 99% of their customers, and most of them would close a deal soon after they started working together. In terms of the biggest achievement in the development, they recently bought two lots, each with a building on them, and combined into one. The general planning allowed only 38 units, but after studying the guidance, they applied for a general planning amendment, which had just been approved. They are now able to build 138 units on the combined lot.

This year, SALA set up a sister company called RateDNA. There are a few different brands under SALA’s umbrella, including Alphainbay, which directly serves the seller, and they can leave their house with them and walk away. Another brand Hestia is responsible for development branding, lot development, and commercial. TDDGUS is a brand that specializes in design and construction. They also have SALA Investment, responsible for various funds that run Airbnb, BRRR, and other development projects. “We as a corporation hope that we achieve the best results possible in all ﬁelds. But SALA Homes is still the one-stop real estate service provider for most individual customers,” says Sunnie. “For myself, I would like to spend more time with my family once the company is on a more stable footing. Before this, 99% of my energy was spent on the company. And I hope the same for all the other employees in this company once we pass the growth spurt.”