La Jolla real estate agent Emma Soederlund has written a children’s book about what it’s like to be a real estate agent.
Illustrated by Estela Raileanu, Elle the Real Estate Agent tells the story of a 10-year-old girl who befriends an elderly neighbor, Mary, and helps Mary sell her house.
Explaining that her home is too big for her, Mary tells Elle, “I have had some beautiful memories here but I think it is time for another family to enjoy it.”
Together, Elle and Mary decide on how much Mary should ask for her home, hire a photographer to take photos of the home, and schedule an open house. But then no one shows up.
Determined, Elle reschedules the open house, distributes flyers advertising the home sale, and the entire town shows up. Elle negotiates a deal for the full asking price.
“Cheers to the best real estate agent in town,” Mary says to Elle.
”And cheers to the next adventure that lies ahead,” Elle responds.
Sharing Her Enthusiasm
From real estate agent to developer, Elle’s future adventures will take her through a range of careers related to real estate, telling them from a child’s perspective, Soederlund said.
A 2021 graduate of San Diego State University with a bachelor’s degree in communications and a minor in commercial real estate, Soederlund moved from her native Stockholm to California in 2016 with a goal of becoming a real estate agent.
“I chose California because I thought it would be the perfect mix of climate, education and business opportunities after my studies,” Soederlund said.
She interned at real estate agencies in Spain and Newport Beach before joining Dane Soderberg & Associates in La Jolla, first as an intern, then as an associate.
Soederlund said that she’s been interested in real estate since she was about Elle’s age and had decided that she wanted a career in real estate by the time she was 16.
Her parents, Anne and Torbjorn Soederlund, worked as fashion agents, while also having their own men’s clothing store which they still operate, Soederlund said.
“They taught me a lot about sales and networking,” she said.
Although their business wasn’t real estate, Soederlund said that her parents bought and sold homes in Sweden.
She decided to move to the U.S. to work in real estate because she said that Sweden is such a small country that there’s just not that much property to buy and sell.
Soederlund said she wrote Elle the Real Estate Agent as a way to share her own enthusiasm about the real estate industry and to introduce children to a career they may never had heard about.
“Real estate ranked as the number one industry with the largest GDP (gross domestic product). To not educate children on the field is a bit bizarre, I think,” Soederlund said. “I personally would have loved to have a (real estate) book as a kid.”
She decided to write her own children’s book after researching the field and finding few books on the topic for young readers.
“I wanted to start introducing the topic of real estate to children at a young age, especially girls,” Soederlund said.
Giving Back
Elle is modeled after her own experiences, Soederlund said.
“In a way, she is me,” Soederlund said. “I was picking things up from what I was doing at the time. We were helping an elderly client sell her home, so that was the inspiration.”
Self-published by Soederlund, Elle the Real Estate Agent is available on Amazon.
For every review posted on Amazon, Soederlund said that she will donate $1 to HomeAid San Diego, a nonprofit that works with the homeless.
“To me, it’s a no-brainer to choose an organization where a portion of the profits would go to help the homeless,” Soederlund said.
