Elijah Opsahl (Twin Cities TC)

Elijah Opsahl is the General Manager and Co-Owner of Twin Cities TC, a company that helps real estate agents save time and money by handling their transactional paperwork.

Born thirty miles outside Minneapolis in Forest Lake, Opsahl breezed through school, but that academic prowess didn’t inspire him to take his education to the next level.

“I wasn’t the guy who always dreamed of being a doctor,” says Opsahl, who mentions that despite taking college courses throughout high school, he never pursued a bachelor’s degree.

“The only time I stepped foot onto a college was while I was attending high school,” he adds.

Opsahl grew up like many of his peers, indoctrinated into a system that told him a college degree would lead to better job prospects and financial security, but that upbringing didn’t have Opsahl convinced he had to join his classmates and enroll at an accredited university.

“The reason I wanted to do college in the first place was to have some sort of plan B, but looking back, I wish I would not have wasted any time in college because I didn’t learn anything that applied to the outside world,” Opsahl explains.

But it’s not like Opsahl had his future career figured out as he threw his graduation cap into the air.

Post-high school, Opsahl first worked in restaurants, scalding his hands as a dishwasher before later being elevated to a line cook.

“It was a lot of hard, physical work, running around and dealing with people for minimal compensation,” Opsahl says of the experience, which proved to be short-lived as he transitioned away from the restaurant business and began selling roofing and siding for a local construction company.

“As far as roofing is concerned, that’s when I started to realize that I can connect with people and use my mind to put sales together,” Opsahl mentions.

“I didn’t have to physically flip burgers or wash dishes to collect a check. I could put deals together, and that drove me into real estate, and ultimately to where I’m at now.”

Today, Opsahl and his business partner own and operate the aforementioned Twin Cities TC, where they leverage their real estate experience and people skills to bring a first-class service to agents throughout the Greater Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

“We make real estate agents’ lives easier,” Opsahl says in describing a business model that is centered around taking care of agents’ tedious and time-consuming paperwork so that they can spend extra time on more profitable tasks.

“It’s all about saving time and money, and then agents can choose what they want to do with that extra time and money, whether that be lead generation, prospecting, or networking,” Opsahl explains.  

Twin Cities TC also brings value to real estate agents by being able to write offers, another monotonous necessity that detracts from many agents’ key skills, which include communicating with clients and hosting showings.

“If a real estate agent has us as a resource, then we can write that document or draft that offer, and again that allows the real estate agent to spend more time on the phone, or even more time with family,” Opsahl details.

A former real estate agent himself, Opsahl says that years ago he was constantly meeting other agents who were burdened by excess paperwork, and as someone who could empathize with those struggles, it didn’t take him long to realize that there was an untapped niche within real estate that could be capitalized upon.

“I saw a need for assistance, but the only people who were filling those needs were executive assistants or a person within a specific brokerage,” Opsahl says, adding that there were no third-party vendors handling an agent’s paperwork, and just like that, he and his business partner began independently offering their services across the Twin Cities.

A significant amount of real estate agents have already partnered with Twin Cities TC, yet perhaps the best part about Opsahl’s business is that they don’t charge their clients until any offer they write has been closed.

For example, if an agent is working with a homeowner who backs out of a sale at the last minute, Twin Cities TC won’t charge their client.   

“That’s the beauty of what we do,” Opsahl says.

“We are not compensated until we provide value, and the thought behind that is we don’t want our agents to pay at the beginning and then be out a bunch of money if they don’t close the deal. Again, we are trying to save them time and money, not cost them time and money.”

For Twin Cities TC, their value proposition has already won them the business of many local real estate agents, and the company’s future appears promising because in addition to capturing market share in the Twin Cities, they have expanded their services to include markets in Wisconsin, and just recently, Florida as well.

Opsahl says that expanding into other parts of the country will help his company grow, but he also stresses that not every real estate agent would benefit from his services, particularly if an agent is new to the industry or if they only sell a few homes per year.

“We don’t want to provide our services to every agent because we don’t fit with what every agent is trying to accomplish,” he explains.

That being said, for the majority of real estate agents, Opsahl’s services provide tremendous value, which has Opsahl and Twin Cities TC motivated to continue innovating and finding new ways to make their clients’ lives easier.

Says Opsahl:

“We have some things in the works that could be very big.” QS

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