In shortAccording to Miami realtor Yana Sitnichenko, she passed her real estate license exam on the ninth attempt and worked as a waitress in her first years in the US. Today she runs a team of 4–5 realtors and splits commissions 50/50 with them; the commission, she says, is about 3% on resale and 6% on new construction, and her biggest deal brought in $56,000. You can buy a condo in Miami with as little as 5% down, in her words, if the buyer has two years of steady income.
A white Range Rover is sitting in the Port of Miami, the newest and most expensive model. In two days Yana Sitnichenko will pick it up: a $250,000 car is the goal she set herself to stop growing in small steps. And early in our conversation, when I brought up an old interview of hers, she laughed and said the line that, as she predicted, this video would open with.
Yes, I cleaned toilets in America.Watch this moment · 5:42
I had the questions everyone asks when they move to the US and look at real estate: how do you become a realtor in Miami when your English isn’t perfect, what do people really earn here, and can you buy a home without the full price? Yana has walked that road from a waitress’s tray to her own team, so I invited her. The conversation felt homey, like two friends sitting down to talk about life, just without the tea.
How do you become a realtor in Miami without great English?
Yana is from Kyiv and has lived in America for seven years. For her first year and a half she worked as a waitress, even though back home she had never worked in the service industry. She tried all sorts of things: once, for $200, she showed up at an event in a feathered costume and realized it wasn’t for her. Her conclusion is blunt: a weak person goes home disappointed in America after something like that, but it motivated her. She decided she would never go back to the tray.
She had always liked real estate. She started studying for her license during an emotionally hard time, her English was “not at its best,” and she passed the exam only on the ninth try. These days, she says, she needs English mostly for negotiations: with associations and with the other side of the deal.
Listening to her talk about nine attempts, I thought about how emigration was a complete reset for me, too. Yana put it in almost the same words.
When you move to another country, you hit rock bottom, no matter what status or money you arrive with.Watch this moment · 40:50
But the skill of finding a way and adapting, she believes, stays with you in any job. America tests everyone: will you go up or down? Yana went up, just more slowly than her Instagram makes it look.
Кадр из выпуска «Без границ»How much does a realtor make in Miami?
Yana gave me the numbers herself. A realtor’s commission, in her words, is about 3% on resale and 6% on new construction. She closes deals that bring in $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 in commission; her biggest brought in $56,000. Her goal for the future is $200,000 net a month, and her team’s work chats are even called “200K.”
What’s interesting is how she explains why people pay her. Clients from Los Angeles and New York look for a Russian-speaking realtor in Miami, find her Instagram, and understand that she won’t burn her account over a $20,000 or $50,000 commission: she has invested far more in it. All her clients speak Russian, and she doesn’t run ads aimed at Americans: “They’ll go to my Instagram, and it’s in Russian.”
Can you buy a condo in Miami without the full price?
Yana is convinced Miami real estate is worth investing in: prices here, she says, keep rising regardless of interest rates and economic swings, and in two years a condo will cost more than it does today.
If you don’t have much money but you have two years of steady employment and income, you can buy with just 5% down, for example a $300,000 condo. With 20% down, almost anything is open to you. You can buy for $200,000 too, Yana says: not “luxury Miami style,” but a good, normal apartment. And in buildings that haven’t gone up yet, you pay in installments during construction and finance only the rest.
Why does a realtor need a team, and how do you delegate?
Nobody taught Yana how to build a business: “I was a total zero at it.” When Instagram started bringing in clients, she could still handle five to ten people on her own. Then she realized that while she was showing apartments to some clients, she wasn’t picking up the phone for others and was losing them. “Oh my God, how many clients I lost, how much money I lost,” she remembers.
The first step was a licensed realtor who had no clients: Yana handed her clients and split the commission in half. A year later came a project manager, Katya, and together they built a team. Today Yana has 4–5 realtors, an outsourced person who distributes leads, a targeting specialist and a marketer. She personally handles new construction and purchases over a million dollars; everything else goes to the team, including rentals.
Closing a $3,000 rental is sometimes harder than closing a $5 million deal.Watch this moment · 45:48
Her rule for delegating is simple: hand off what you don’t like doing. Yana “hates making phone calls,” but she can easily strike up a conversation with anyone at entrepreneur meetups. So her best realtor makes the calls; for him it’s no problem at all. Yana’s own schedule: Monday, Wednesday and Friday out on shoots and visits, Tuesday and Thursday on the phone, Sunday sacred.
Кадр из выпуска «Без границ»How do you stop being afraid and make a “quantum leap”?
A week before our recording, Yana spoke in New York on the same stage as Yevgeny Chernyak, whose Big Money interviews she used to binge. Before her talk she asked me how not to be scared, and every morning she woke up anxious: how will I walk out, what will I say. She walked onto the stage and found the fear was gone.
The life hack for success is to walk toward your fears.Watch this moment · 14:35
The $250,000 car comes from the same place. The logical move would have been a $120,000 car and calm growth, but Yana chose double that, so the goal would force her to build a business on a different scale. Money, she says, isn’t for spending; it’s for peace of mind: buying a ticket to Europe and knowing the team is working without you.
Кадр из выпуска «Без границ»What I take away from this conversation
Yana started going to the gym at 29, half a year before turning thirty, and she says that’s when she began building her business: discipline in the gym became discipline at work. As a trainer, I feel that one deeply. She’s also a maximalist, and that’s so familiar to me: for her, “it’s never enough.” By the way, our birthdays are exactly one month apart.
The white Range Rover in the port isn’t about luxury. It’s about a woman who cleaned toilets, took the exam nine times, and still set herself a goal twice as big as reasonable. And that, I think, is exactly why she reached it.
If you’re thinking about a career in real estate or buying a home in Florida, watch the full episode; it’s in Russian, and YouTube can auto-translate the subtitles into English. Our entire conversation, word for word, is on the next page.
Kristina Samofal
Photo & Video Production