A New Agency, a New TV Show, a New Life At only 27, Diana Vizcarra is already something of a mogul. Last year, she opened her own real estate agency, SoCal Short Sale in Costa Mesa. She’s staffed it with a young, diverse team, who, among them, speak 11 different languages. And she’s firming up plans with TV producers to start work on a real estate reality show. • It’s all the more impressive because Vizcarra has been legally blind since 2009. • Her vision problems began in 2007 when she was diagnosed with VKH syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder. She was already working as a REALTOR® and the VKH was, as she puts it, “a pain in the butt,” limiting her vision and requiring frequent visits to ophthalmologists. In November 2009, she woke up with an excruciating pain in her eyes and her head. She was rushed to the hospital and was told she’d become legally blind. It was permanent. At the time, Vizcarra was working at Realty Benefit in Lake Forest, learning the business—studying contracts, selling, and the intricacies of short sales. She had a decision to make. “I figured that I could either stay home, collect disability, and be miserable or I could continue to do what I was doing and be happy continuing with my career,” she says. “I decided to just push forward. I was able to make enough money that I could still provide for my parents and myself without having to rely on the state. “I’ve always been the type of person who finds solutions to every problem,” explains Vizcarra, “I don’t like the words ‘can’t’ or ‘no’ or ‘impossible.’ I don’t understand those words.” Vizcarra tackled her new circumstances with her typical “find a solution” style. She discovered tools like ZoomText, a magnifying computer program that allows her to read emails, albeit one letter at a time. Her phone has an app that reads her emails and texts aloud. And she relies on her assistant Angie Menjivar, a doctoral student studying integrative therapy and healing, for help ranging from practical day-to-day matters like checking for wardrobe malfunctions to a more general role of “life enrichment” with her focus on “thriving vs. traditional pathology.” While learning to cope with her new vision issues, Vizcarra kept working, all the while studying the Orange County real estate market, looking for a niche to fill. Less than two years after her diagnosis, she opened SoCal Short Sale in June of 2011. “I was coming across so many people who were hesitant to hire a regular real estate agent because they thought, ‘This person doesn’t have the experience to negotiate with my lender,’” says Vizcarra. “There wasn’t an office that was specializing in short sales or distressed sales in Orange County. It was something I knew I had to create.” SoCal Short Sale focuses solely on short sales, offering clients accessible customer service and a team of experts who understand the process. Clients don’t feel judged or uncomfortable because they know that Vizcarra’s team deals with short sales every day, she says. Like any real estate specialty, short sales come with their own set of challenges. “In short sales, the first challenge is that people don’t trust agents,” says Vizcarra. “There are plenty of people out there who have been through scams or been promised so many things that they’re very skeptical about proceeding with a short sale because they have such a horrible notion of what we do as agents. The second challenge is the lenders. I feel that they’re not fully cooperating with agents, even though they have taken some steps to facilitate the short sales. We still have problems getting two different lenders to communicate to figure out what’s going to happen with first and second liens. In this field, if you don’t have the first and second and third lien cooperating, then that will break your deal and you’re not going to be able to close.” In 2011, after being open only five months, the company sold 11 homes. As of August 2012, they’d sold 12. The team now includes eight licensed agents and seven “junior” agents. Vizcarra developed the junior agent program as a way to foster young talent. Junior agents are working on getting their credentials, but don’t yet have a license. They get a chance to learn about the business by shadowing licensed agents on tasks like “door knocking,” that is, going door to door to talk with people who are losing their homes. If an agent shows promise, Vizcarra will work on a plan with them to achieve their short and long term goals. Vizcarra deliberately chose a multi-cultural team who shared her vision. “We have Koreans, Indians, Pakistanis— you name it, it’s very diverse and we’re all young,” she says of her staff. SoCal Short Sale, with its attractive,diverse staff and beautiful young blind Latina president quickly attracted the attention of reality TV producers who proposed an office-type reality show to Vizcarra. Someone less savvy might have jumped at the chance, but Vizcarra thought it over and decided to pass. “I’ve worked hard to be perceived as a business woman and I didn’t want to be portrayed as a ‘character,’” she explains. But instead of passing up on the chance for the media exposure, Vizcarra came back with a counter offer—a real estate competition show. In the show (at press time, Vizcarra could only discuss it in general terms), three families who are going to lose their homes present their cases to a panel of three judge/ investors. The winner will be given a new loan, refinanced at their home’s current value. The other two will be given the opportunity to buy another home that’s more within their means. SoCal Short Sale will find the contestants and Vizcarra will serve as the on-air advocate for each family, presenting their cases to the judges. With a show in the works and a growing real estate company, Vizcarra makes it all look so easy that sometimes people underestimate how difficult it’s been for her. A lot of people, for example, assume she’d easily learn Braille. “As you get older, it’s harder to learn. I get so irritated knowing that I have to take that extra time to do it. I even got a Monopoly Braille game, thinking that if I could make it more entertaining and fun, I’d learn how to read Braille. But it’s been so tough—I throw these little Monopoly pieces all over the room because I get so pissed off because I can’t read them.” Slow processes don’t come easily to Vizcarra. She has been a quick learner since age two when her father, originally from Spain, taught her to swim. She was surfing by four, and shooting a gun and practicing driving in Mexico by 10. “He really wanted me to understand everything and be independent,” says Vizcarra, who credits her father for her ambition. As a teen, she worked in the posh St. Regis Hotel in Dana Point and noticed that real estate agents would drop thousands of dollars a night on food and drinks. She started compiling a list of contacts in the real estate field and, by 19, she had a conditional real estate license. At 21, she had her full license. The biggest challenge for Vizcarra has been having to give up some of that hard-won independence. “I used to be of a mind set of ‘If I need to do something, I’ll do it myself and I’ll do it 10 times better.’ I didn’t like people to tag along and I didn’t want people to have to assist me,” she says. “I’m learning to be patient.” Still, she clings to independence where she finds it and is grateful for tools like the software that magnifies her email. “I’m able to read them—maybe one letter at a time—but still, the feeling of being able to read my own emails is so gratifying that I don’t care how long it takes.” Jill Hamilton (jill.longbeach@yahoo.com) is a freelance writer based in Long Beach. STATS Diana Vizcarra SoCal Short Sale Realty Age: 27 Strengths: My resolve, ability to infl uence, and memory. Weakness: I can be naïve, always looking for the good in everyone Very fi rst job: Chantilly Ice Cream in Laguna Beach (I was 14) Most recent purchase: An audio CD, Eckhart Tolle’s Music to Quiet the Mind, from Awakenings Center for Conscious Living Can’t live without: Music! No. 1 on my “bucket list”: Writing a book (my life story to impact and inspire others) Career choice #2: Inspirational speaker Best advice received: “[You] may never see the view outside [your] offi ce window. But that hardly matters. There is sight and there is insight.” —David Whiting, O.C. Register