Realities of Being a Real Estate Agent

Thousands of people every single day in America are eagerly chomping at the bit after having taken their state real estate exams and passing them with flying colors. The sad reality is that well over half, and probably nearer to three fourths of new agents eventually drop their licenses after just two or three years. Some keep them up only to do real estate part-time while they work at another major job that pays the bills. Some get licensed just to benefit from the commissions when they buy and sell their own properties. But people who have thought about becoming agents and working that as full-time professionals need to go into that decision with eyes wide open. If they don't, they can loose some big money and a few years of their lives doing something for which they're not suited or not equipped financially to handle.

First, let me say that doing real estate full-time is very, very costly. Like any sales job, what you make on sales and service is only the "Net" and not the gross of earned commissions. An agent must work under a licensed broker, like a local agency or one of the national franchises such at Coldwell-Banker or Century 21, for instance. That broker pays for the agent's desk, carries the expenses of maintaining an office and should help the agent with disputes or problems. It's crucial to get a broker who doesn't care about managing his or her office and you're in trouble. New agents need all the help and training they can get. I found myself in trouble when I realized that my broker was actually competing with all the agents in her office. It was, in fact, a very troubling problem that caused quite a lot of muffled grumbling in our office. This broker had worked her way up, of course, and deserved the success she had earned. What she did not earn was the right to ignore her broker responsibilities to all the other agents under her, who put money in her pocket every time they made a sale. She was hard to reach. She had a slew of assistants that had to be gotten around just to talk to her. And she was generally selling her own property listings 24/7.