Meet this former reality star turned real estate agent for the Raiders
Cami Lincowski has some advice for young real estate agents looking to get into the game.
“Pick up the phone,” said the 36-year-old Puerto Rico born agent who now calls Las Vegas home. “That’s what makes a good real estate agent.”
Lincowski has made a name for herself in the Las Vegas real estate game by working with professional athletes including a slew of current and former Las Vegas Raiders such as Aidan O’Connell, Byron Young, McClendon Curtis, Tre Tucker and Alec Ingold.
She said the younger generation has lost that personal touch, and the hustle it takes to make it in the real world.
“Even when I’m calling another agent, I like to catch someone off guard, I don’t want to text you and give you a chance to think about it, I’m gonna call you right away if I can’t do something face to face.”
Lincowski’s journey to one of the top Realtors in Clark County started in Puerto Rico where she was born, and in Miami where she was raised. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she learned how to deal with adversity early on when she lost a sibling in 1996.
“I had a good childhood, but it was a crazy childhood. My oldest sister died when I was 9 in a car crash, and that was kind of the breaking point for my parents,” she said. “And so my mom ended up having to work two jobs all the time to support us. I barely saw her, she would have her hairstylist take me to school sometimes because she was working so much.”
However, Lincowski was able to use the tragedy as fuel for his first potential career path, as she attended Nova Southeastern University after graduating from high school in 2005, obtaining her bachelor’s degree in philosophy. The plan was to go to law school and join the fight for justice.
“After my sister passed, it was really hard for me because the guy who killed her was a career criminal and he didn’t get the punishment that he deserved from the law, he got pled down to vehicular homicide and got 10 years. And so I was adamant I was going to become a lawyer.”
A turn on reality TV
The dream would bump up against reality as Lincowski wasn’t able to secure funding to go to law school, and instead got her master’s degree in communications from Florida Atlantic University. Lincowski then found herself working in the nightclub scene in Miami, bartending and bottle service. It was then that she got a unique opportunity: to move to the UK and take part in the reality television show “Celebrity Big Brother 15” in 2015. Lincowski didn’t win the competition, but she learned a number of valuable lessons about the entertainment business, and herself.
“I’d never watched the show, so I was kind of like a lamb to wolves. I was so raw and vulnerable whereas some people had game plans, or they had done reality TV shows before. I also wasn’t prepared for the level of scrutiny afterwards.”
She continued her career in reality television but everything changed when she met her current husband, Brent Lincowski, a mortgage lender who lived in Las Vegas. Lincowski moved to Vegas in 2015, and by 2018 had her real estate license. Soon she realized she had a knack for networking, and selling.
She met one of her first clients at a Super Bowl party, but it was a subtle online switch that helped her kick-start her career into overdrive.
“When I started I had a separate account from my personal Instagram, because I had so many followers and I didn’t want anyone to find my number or anything like that. But then after like a year, I thought, ‘This is dumb. Why am I not taking advantage of this?’”
Soon Lincowski had found her niche through her contacts and network: professional athletes, but she said it was definitely not an overnight sensation type of thing.
“I was pretty relentless to be honest,” she said. “And a big part of it is helping them through the entire experience. People think it must be crazy working with NFL players but it’s more about guiding them through the process and working with their financial advisors, so you’re dealing with a lot of people and a lot of different interests.”
She now calls Henderson home with her husband and two daughters, and said she is grateful for her journey and her long rise to the top. Of course, it’s not all work, there is a bit of play involved too. Lincowski has picked up an interesting hobby that she uses on almost a daily basis to destress from the rigors of being a high-powered Realtor.
“Are you ready to laugh? I do puzzles,” she said. “My mother in law got me into puzzles and I had really bad postpartum after my first daughter and she came and was like, ‘Hey, Cami do you want to try this puzzle?’ And now I find it’s a great way to help decompress from the day, I just sit down and put my phone away for like 45 minutes, and it just helps me relax.”