From RE/MAX to Real: Justine Derby on Buying a Home in 2026, Letting Go of Imposter Syndrome & Refusing to Be Boxed In

Justine Derby and Logan Lewis had recorded together once before, but that first episode never saw the light of day — Justine gave Logan the honest, unfiltered feedback that the lighting was "piss poor," and he pulled it rather than release it. This time, recording from Logan's new space at 216 Coworking, they got it right, and Justine brought a year's worth of stories worth telling. She's a top-producing realtor with Real Broker, ranked among the top 10 individual agents in Cobb County, and known across Metro Atlanta by her handle: Sold by Justine. What followed was equal parts real estate market breakdown and a raw conversation about imposter syndrome, burnout, and why Justine has stopped apologizing for who she is.

You Can't Put Justine in a Box

Justine spent years, first at her family's RE/MAX brokerage, playing it polished and buttoned-up because that's what the industry expected. "Authenticity truly, truly, truly will always shine through," she told Logan, and the moment she stopped performing professionalism and started posting her real self — weight loss journey, hard days, personal opinions and all — her business exploded. When Logan asked what her biggest critics say about her, she didn't dodge it: "Probably that I am fake and that all of it's a show." Her answer to that noise is simple and blunt: "You can't put Justine in a box. And if you try to put me in a box, I will tear my way out of it." The biggest misconception people have about her, she said, is that success came easy. It didn't. "People don't know the struggles that it's been. People don't know the hard work, the sweat, the tears, the constant self doubt that we all have when putting yourself out there."

The Hardest Year of Her Career

Behind the highlight reel, Justine told Logan that last year was "probably the hardest year I've ever had personally and professionally at the same time." She left her family's RE/MAX brokerage to join Real, a move plenty of people around her questioned since, at the time, barely anyone had heard of the company. She'd been watching industry trends closely and believed Real was where the business was headed — a bet that paid off in a big way when Real announced it was acquiring RE/MAX outright. "That morning when I found that out, I cried. I cried like a baby, but it was out of happiness," she said, describing the deal as an overnight jump from roughly 33,000 agents to about 210,000 agents worldwide. She's clear-eyed about why she stays loyal to Real specifically: "I will always have so much respect for Real Broker because I've seen firsthand through our leadership that they do put their agents first... the minute that I see the shift change from real being about the agents to real being about corporate, that's gonna end everything that we have built." That same season, she found out she'd landed in the top 10 individual agents in Cobb County — called for number nine at an awards ceremony she almost skipped. "So many people do say, well, she just shows up online and does a lot of video and she does it for attention... I did earn that," she said, calling it the moment her imposter syndrome finally started to lift.

Buying a Home in 2026 Isn't as Doom and Gloom as It Sounds

Justine walked Logan through where the market actually stands right now: inventory sitting between four and six months, which she says is a genuinely normalized, stabilized market compared to the frenzy of the last several years. Her advice to sellers is blunt — price, location, and condition move a property, full stop, and agents who tell clients what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear are the reason so many listings are expiring. For buyers, especially first-timers scared off by headlines, she pushed back hard on the idea that you need 15 to 25 percent down. She described a recent Decatur closing where her clients used a down payment assistance program, the seller covered most of the closing costs, and they walked into their home for under $6,000 out of pocket — "you can't even get into a rental for a deposit with that." On rate buydowns, her rule of thumb is straightforward: worth it if the seller is footing the bill, rarely worth it out of pocket for a buyer, since rates are trending down and refinancing later usually makes more sense. And on refinancing in general: "if you can drop a whole point or more, absolutely do it." She doesn't think mortgage rates will ever revisit 2021's sub-3% territory — "lightning in a bottle," as she called it — but she does expect rates in the high fours to low fives again.

Learning to Let Go of the Paperwork

Justine, self-described control freak, described the moment she finally hired real help. Her friend Sarah started as her part-time assistant, and Justine eventually put her on salary — "talk about leap of faith, my friend... I've got somebody on salary." But because Sarah wasn't a licensed agent, there was only so much she could take off Justine's plate, and eventually the two of them sat at Justine's table and cried together as Sarah told her, essentially, that she wasn't the right fit for the role anymore — "Justine, I need you in my life too, but as a friend." Sarah still works with her doing staging, and Justine has since hired a licensed director of operations who can show houses and write offers. The lesson Justine keeps coming back to: figure out your actual superpower and hand off the rest. "My superpower is being in front of my clients, negotiating on their behalf, showing up for them. That is my superpower. The paperwork, I'm telling them, I'm negotiating everything. I'm just not the one physically writing it anymore."

Listen to the Full Conversation

This recap only scratches the surface. Justine and Logan also get into her twice-monthly "Not Working" networking events (one business-focused morning meetup, one happy hour), why she believes real estate is one of the few industries where helping a competitor helps you too ("There is so much food out there. So much. So many mouths."), how she carves out intentional one-on-one time with her kids around a packed schedule, and a rapid-fire round covering everything from The Notebook to her love of Nickelback. Catch the full episode below.