A career in real estate can be extremely rewarding. As a real estate agent, you’ll get plenty of independence, flexibility, and opportunity. This is also your chance to earn a great living in a fast-paced environment where you’ll meet interesting people and tour stunning properties!
Before you get started in this industry, you need to understand that a career in real estate is very different from a traditional 9 to 5 office position.
Here’s what you need to know about being a real estate agent, especially if this is your first-ever job.
1. You Need to Think Like a Business Owner
As a real estate agent, you won’t be an employee; you’ll be an independent contractor. This means that you’re essentially a small business owner. And being a business owner requires a wide range of skills. Yes, you’ll need to know how to buy and sell homes. But you’ll also need to know general business practices like:
Time management
Budgeting and tax planning
Operations and management
Your real estate broker may have resources to help you with some of this business administration. Your broker is the person responsible for overseeing your work. They’re the closest thing you’ll have to a boss. But it’s also their job to support you and make sure you have the tools you need to succeed. As a business owner, you should take full advantage of any resources your broker offers.
2. Finding New Clients is the Only Way to Succeed
Most real estate agents don’t earn an hourly wage or annual salary. Instead, you get paid a commission when you close a deal.
Commissions generally range between 5% and 6% of the final sales price, but the commission on a sale is split four ways. First, it’s split between the agents representing buyers and sellers (typically split 50/50). Then, each agent’s broker takes a share of their agent’s earnings. This amount is based on the agent/broker agreement, but the broker’s share could be as high as 50%.
When you’re paid on commission, you need to maintain a pipeline of clients to regulate your income as much as possible. This means dedicating time every day to prospecting for new leads.
Your first clients will likely come from your “sphere of influence” (people you already know). But you can also get creative to reach new leads:
Market your properties (and yourself!) on Insta and TikTok.
Hide Easter Eggs in your marketing materials to attract clients that share your interests. This can create instant rapport.
Create hyper-local content to boost your Google ranking and generate organic online leads.
3. You Choose Your Work Schedule
Most traditional jobs don’t allow you to choose your own hours. But with real estate, you work when it suits you and your clients.
If you’re a night owl, you might schedule your client appointments in the evenings when your buyers and sellers are home from work, stay up late with your paperwork and business administration tasks, then sleep in until noon.
The flexible schedule also allows for daytime errands, last-minute trips, extended vacations, or even working part-time rather than full-time.
4. Be Ready to Prove Yourself
As a young agent, you won’t have the experience of the established agents in your market. So you’ll need to work extra hard to earn the trust and respect of local buyers and sellers.
Here are a few ways to demonstrate your expertise and gain a competitive edge, even if real estate is your first job and you’re still new:
Have your own website, not just a page on your broker’s site. This will give you instant credibility. There are several options for launching your real estate website, so you don’t need a big budget to make this happen.
Showcase your knowledge through content marketing. Creating content for your blog will help increase your website’s rank on Google so that you get more organic traffic to your site. And you can repurpose this content for your social media marketing strategy.
Be responsive. The previous generations of agents are more likely to take “off hours” in which they totally ignore calls and messages. Simply responding to leads faster can give you a competitive advantage.
5. Focus on Your Network to Build a Referral Business
The more referrals you get from friends, family, and past clients, the less time and money you have to spend to generate new leads. So it makes sense to focus on building connections and expanding your network from Day One.
Start by adding all your current contacts to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database. Then set prompts to make sure you’re following up with everyone on your list multiple times per year to see if they know of anyone looking to make a move.
As you start closing deals, you can earn referrals from past clients by asking for testimonials and creating a referral rewards program. Within a few years, you might be getting most of your new clients from referrals!
Launch Your Real Estate Career Now!
Are you ready to enjoy the many benefits of an exciting career in real estate? Aceable makes it convenient and affordable to complete the real estate courses you need to get your real estate license online.
Simply enroll in the real estate course for your state, and complete the coursework online at your own pace. Within as little as a few months, you’ll be ready to pass your real estate exam, earn your real estate license, and start your new business as a real estate agent.
Why wait to start your dream career? Enroll now and get started today!
Updated 6/12/23