Can-Do Spirit: Liz Do has always loved selling. At 17, she managed a skate shop. But since 2005, she has sold homes—lots of them ($8.4 million worth in 2008 to be exact). Recently, most of her sales have been foreclosures; last year only two of the 22 homes she sold were standard sales. "People are getting bargains," she says.
Calling on her roots: In addition to covering Huntington Beach, she also sells in Westminster, which has the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam. She was born in Tulsa, Okla., to Vietnamese parents. Some clients laugh at her second-generation Vietnamese language skills—but not at her honest hard work.
Financial prowess: When she started in real estate, Do developed spreadsheets to help clients figure out their living expenses. "I felt like a lot of people were overextending themselves," she says. She advised several people to wait until the market settled down. Now those same people are coming back to her, she says. "One knocked at my door and said, ‘Liz, do you still have my spreadsheet?’"