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WHY NOW
THE STORY BEHIND THE MOMENT.
Real Estate Agent Journal Spotlights professionals when a moment, idea or transition offers something useful to the wider industry.
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THE SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW
SIX QUESTIONS.
ONE STORY WORTH SHARING.
SPOTLIGHT
In Miami Real Estate, Information Is Cheap. Judgment Isn't.
Sara Mullis spent decades teaching global teams how to make better decisions under pressure. Now she's teaching Miami buyers and sellers the same thing.
9/8/26, 6:21 AM
QUESTION 1 - THE MOMENT
Thanks so much for joining us. Let’s start with a quick intro—who you are, where you work—and maybe a hint about the news or topic you’re excited to talk about.
I'm Sara Mullis — a real estate advisor with Compass, working across Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, Miami Shores, Brickell, and Miami Beach. Before real estate, I spent years in management consulting and executive coaching, and trained in principled negotiation alongside people from the Harvard Negotiation Project. Square footage never interested me much. How people make decisions under pressure, with half the facts and twice the anxiety — that did. Turns out that's basically the entire real estate business.
Which is what I'm most excited to talk about today. I write a bilingual editorial project called 'Here's the Thing', where I cover the judgment calls, psychology, and quiet mistakes that shape a Miami transaction — the parts no listing description will ever mention. Less "here's a house," more "here's how people actually think their way through buying or selling one." It's grown into a book now, same title, which I'm finishing — same argument, more room to make it properly. It's become the thing I'm proudest of.
QUESTION 2 — THE STORY BEHIND IT
We’d love to hear your origin story. How did you get into real estate, and why does this career matter so much to you personally?
When I retired from consulting, I told myself I was done — done with a travel schedule that had me working with teams across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia, fifty weeks a year. Then I discovered something inconvenient: I am a genuinely lousy retired person.
I didn't want to fill time. I wanted work that was rooted somewhere — in a community, not on a plane — and that used the instincts I'd spent decades sharpening: staying calm when everyone else panics, refusing to oversimplify, and not just telling people what they want to hear. Real estate wasn't the obvious next move. It turned out to be the right one. Buying or selling a home is one of the highest-stakes, most emotional decisions most people will ever make, and almost nobody gets real help making it — they get information. I already knew how to help people decide well under pressure with incomplete facts. I just hadn't done it in someone's kitchen before.
QUESTION 3 — WHY IT MATTERS
We’ve been looking forward to this—what’s the topic or insight you wanted to spotlight today, and what inspired it?
Everyone assumes Miami's real estate problem is a lack of information. It's actually the opposite. This market drowns in data — Zillow estimates, comps, market reports, more numbers than anyone could responsibly use. People don't fail at buying or selling because they don't have enough of it. They fail because they misread it, or because someone hands them confident advice that was never actually earned. That's a judgment problem, not an information problem — the same thing I spent years studying in consulting, just with kitchens instead of conference rooms.
So I started writing about it: the psychology of buyers and sellers, the ways aspirational pricing quietly wrecks a negotiation, why the inspection period isn't a second chance to renegotiate even though everyone treats it like one. It's bilingual, because half of Miami thinks through these decisions in Spanish and deserves the same rigor, not a straight translation. And it's outgrown articles — it's a book now, same title, that I'm finishing this year. Same argument. More room to actually make it.
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QUESTION 4 — WHAT YOU’VE LEARNED
Let’s unpack this a bit further. What should people understand about the impact or importance of what you shared?
Here's what people miss: misjudging a decision isn't an abstract cost. It shows up as actual dollars and actual regret. I've watched sellers list at a number that felt right and then sit on the market for months, because that number wasn't really theirs — it was anchored to some other sale down the street that had nothing to do with their home's condition, timing, or terms. That gap, between what the market will pay and what a seller feels the house is worth, might be the single most expensive misunderstanding in Miami real estate. And it happens because a number feels like a fact, when really it's just the opening move in a negotiation nobody's had yet.
Once you get that — that most of the "facts" floating around a transaction are really just inputs to somebody's judgment call — you start asking better questions. Not "what did the house down the street sell for," but "what does that number actually tell me, and what is it conveniently leaving out." That's the whole premise of Here's the Thing, in one habit.
QUESTION 5 — WHAT COMES NEXT
What are some common myths or misunderstandings people have about this topic—and what’s the truth?
The one I'd retire if I could: that hiring the right agent means nothing will go wrong. It won't. Nobody can promise that. What a good agent actually offers isn't risk elimination — it's judgment in the moment when something inevitably goes sideways, because something always does.
I had a buyer close on a property from a couple in the middle of an ugly divorce. The day the sale closed — a Friday night, the hottest day of the year in Miami — the outgoing spouse cut the utilities on her way out: water, electricity, both gone. The tenants living in the building were stranded, no AC, no water, in August, and furious — at my buyer, the brand-new landlord who'd had absolutely nothing to do with any of it. He called me in a full panic.
There was no clause in the contract for this. No checklist. I called emergency services to get eyes on the tenants, tracked down a plumber who could get out there that night to turn the main back on, and picked up dinner for everyone stuck in a hot building with nothing to eat. By Saturday morning, instead of a landlord his new tenants hated on sight, my buyer had one who'd shown up for them in a crisis he didn't cause. That's not a story about avoiding risk. It's a story about what happens after risk shows up anyway — which is the actual job.
QUESTION 6 — THE TAKEAWAY
Before we wrap up, could you leave readers with some final thoughts—and let everyone know how they can reach you or learn more about your work?
Let's just say I've been at this long enough to remember when "starter home" meant something under six figures — and I've stopped being surprised by much since. Every few years, Miami convinces itself it invented panic. It didn't. Same three-act show every time: everyone loses their mind, everyone insists this time is different, and six months later everyone's fine and pretending they knew that all along. I've watched the rerun enough times I could narrate it for you, live, with popcorn.
Which is exactly why I do this: I tell the listing agent upfront, before we're even in contract, that inspection is for major issues — not a quiet chance to renegotiate over a couple of loose tiles. Sounds small. Changes the entire tone of a deal, because both sides stop treating the inspection period like a hidden second negotiation — which is exactly what happens when nobody sets that expectation early.
So here's my one closing thought: don't let a single data point or one bad week convince you the sky is falling. It probably isn't. It's probably just Tuesday, Miami real estate edition.
Want more of this — the patterns, the psychology, the occasional cautionary tale? That's the whole premise of Here's the Thing and Miami Market Watch, both at MiamiThruSara.com. I'm also on Instagram at @MiamiThruSara, and you can always call or text me directly at 305.781.4320.
Agent Team
Sara Mullis
Compass
Compass
Service Area
Miami
Bio
Sara Mullis retired from global consulting, discovered she was a genuinely lousy retired person, and became a real estate advisor instead — working Coral Gables to Miami Beach. Harvard-trained in negotiation, allergic to hype, she writes 'Here's the Thing' (soon a book) on why Miami real estate rewards judgment, not information. MiamiThruSara.com
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