This Mom’s Day, Creator Martha Melendez Displays On Her Mother

At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will probably be banished, all of your large questions will probably be answered, and new enterprise alternatives will probably be revealed. Join us.

Martha Melendez wrote a e-book in January, similar to her mom at all times knew she would. 

You would possibly know Melendez from her 2024 book, The Aspiring Agent: From Overworked Rookie to Real Estate Rockstar. Otherwise you would possibly acknowledge her from her appearances on HGTV’s My Lottery Dream Home, or from stage appearances at WomanUP! or Engel & Völkers’ EVX convention — she has been an agent at Engel & Völkers Melbourne for almost six years. 

After assembly Melendez for the primary time at WomanUP! in 2022, the place she advised her story of being a home abuse survivor, two issues stood out clearly: She’s a fierce, genuine, profitable lady, and she or he credit her mother for all of it. 

A mom’s love

“My mother has at all times been my base, my rock, my every part,” Melendez advised Inman.  

“She was so forward of her time. She wore denims earlier than anyone else did. She reduce her hair off as a result of again then, all the women had [long hair] … She was impartial, prefer to a fault. She at all times felt that she may do issues, and she or he didn’t want a person to inform her what to do, and she or he didn’t ever need to get married,” she mentioned. And he or she didn’t.

When Melendez was a baby rising up in Columbia, the academics dictated all of their classes, so college students took copious notes. Melendez’s mom, Maria Clementina Perdomo, would take Melendez’s notebooks from college and have them sure into hardback, leather-bound books for yearly in class, which she nonetheless has to at the present time.

“As a result of she had a imaginative and prescient: She needed me to be an writer. However she by no means advised me that,” Melendez mentioned. 

Dwelling in Columbia within the ’80s, Perdomo noticed the drug cartels taking up, Melendez mentioned, so Perdomo bought every part and moved herself and Melendez to the U.S., regardless of neither of them with the ability to converse English.

Perdomo was already retired in Columbia, however within the States, she took a $3-an-hour manufacturing facility job. Melendez would work aspect by aspect along with her within the summers after she turned 14.

Realizing the necessity to acclimate to their new residence, Melendez mentioned she signed her mother up for English lessons on the Hispanic Middle in downtown Mount Holly, New Jersey, on Mondays and Wednesdays.

They’d stroll two miles after work and college to take lessons, and Melendez would sit in on the lessons, telling the academics she wasn’t certain that her mother would be capable of discover her means again. She absorbed every part as a result of she acknowledged that her mother would wish her to study English on this new life. 

Then Melendez discovered they had been educating English for adults at the highschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays and signed up for that, too. Her mother didn’t choose up English, however Melendez did; she discovered to jot down checks, deal with medical doctors’ appointments and lease an residence. 

“It was such a journey with my mother and I, and I feel that’s why I at all times speak about her as a result of it was at all times my mother and I,” Melendez mentioned. 

Robust instances

Melendez married at 18. The wedding was abusive, and the younger couple struggled to outlive, renting a room that had no entry to a rest room whereas Melendez was six months pregnant and dealing two jobs to make ends meet. She usually relied on a espresso can.

“Thank God, I used to be in a position to get out alive. Many individuals don’t,” Melendez advised Inman. “It needed to go that far for me to open my eyes. I feel I might nonetheless be there with my Folgers can.”

A therapist as soon as advised her that when you may inform the story with out crying, you’ve healed from it. She advised the story for the primary time on the WomanUP! stage, Folgers can in hand. 

“It took a few years for me to heal from that. I didn’t need to be a sufferer. And I didn’t need to be a survivor as a result of it meant that you just had trauma that you just survived, and I needed to thrive. I didn’t need to be the lady that received hit. And so I mentioned, How do I modify that narrative?” Melendez advised Inman. 

“I’m glad that I went by that as a result of it made me a powerful particular person. And I can acknowledge it, and I can assist others,” she mentioned. 

Making mother’s goals come true

In 1998, Melendez reconnected along with her 1992 promenade date, Lucian Melendez. He wooed her exhausting, shopping for her a automotive and a house and relocating to Florida earlier than they received married in 2000 and had two extra youngsters.  

Melendez received her actual property license in 2005 whereas educating English as a second language. Lucian Melendez is now an assistant principal at a highschool in Viera, Florida.

Perdomo was by her daughter’s aspect for this completely happy chapter of latest beginnings. However sadly, she handed away on Oct. 28, 2020. Melendez says it wasn’t till after she misplaced her mother that she actually acknowledged all of the sacrifices she had made. 

In January of 2024, Melendez made her mother’s dream come true when she printed her first e-book, The Aspiring Agent: From Overworked Rookie to Real Estate Rockstar. It’s the e-book she needs she had when she first began out in actual property.

It’s the right how-to for Melendez’s 29-year-old daughter, Alexandra Villa, who began her personal actual property profession in November 2023. 

Once they’d take lengthy drives, Melendez would learn her e-book to Villa, they usually’d talk about it collectively, with Villa even quoting recommendation from the e-book again to her mother. Now, Villa is working in her mother’s workplace, a part of the Engel & Völkers household. 

Melendez mentioned it looks like she’s repeating the cycle. “I labored with my mother, and now [Alexandra] will get to work with me. I hope that now that she’s an grownup, we will deepen our relationship. I’m pleased with the mother that she is, and I hope that at some point, she will do the identical along with her daughter, and we will have a 3rd technology of actual property brokers.”

Email Dani Vanderboegh