i work at a prison and I have a TON of time off.. in 2 weeks i only work 7 days. So basically i work only 6 months out of the year. I'm only 25 years old and i'm trying to get my life started.. I'm late I know. Im doing ok, but i really need more income. I don't know what the risk, or reward, is to getting a real estate license. Any advice??
I suggest not doing agency in real estate. way before you do RE or anything else, visit a library and slowly, ever so slowly. read subject titles. See what might stroke some old old interests. btw--I have taught at prisons as a biz teacher and i have never ever known any prison employee to have such erratic hours as you have; what do you do for them? visit a community college and see what a vocational /interest test shows you might be really good at. Luck
Working real estate part time can be difficult. You need to be able to communicate with your clients throughout the day and early evening when they have questions and I doubt the prison will allow you to take calls while on duty.
Not much risk, just the cost of getting the license. The reward can be a great deal of money, or not so much. The average agent sells just 1-2 homes a year, which will not pay the bills but could be a nice bonus. Good agents who work their business sell 12-50 homes/year or more. If you don't want to be a good agent, do the full-time agents a favor and don't bother. There are plenty of agents who don't want to work, already.
I am not an agent, but I can tell you this for sure: Anyone and everyone can become a real estate agent. It is a short class that you take at any community college. With that said, there are always a large number of people who are taking the class and trying their hand at the real estate game, and most of them end up leaving. Here's why: When you first join a company, you are at the bottom. You do not get the listings that go for millions (If your city even has many houses selling for that price, not everyone lives in beverly hills), but instead you get the small starter homes, and pretty much things no one else wants to get. You have to build up your own client base and maintain a GIANT social network of friends who don't mind you pitching sales to them every now and then. You have to get a reputation as a good agent which can be VERY hard to do. You have to pay for most of your own advertising, and to top it off, if someone else sells the house (Any realitor from any company can sell any house for sale by any other company), your commission is drastically cut. Keep in mind as well that the company charges a 7% of the closing value. You do not get the 7%, you get a % of that. On a 50,000.00 house, you will not make that much money. Also consider that you will have NO freetime. You will always be looking for new clients, going to show houses at a clients whim, studying the houses you want to sell so that you can tell your clients all about them... the list goes on and on. It is far more than a full time job, and in the end, unless you're in a multi-million dollar neighborhood, you're not going to make that much money anyhow. Even if you are in one of those neighborhoods, you have people who have been in the business for 30 years or more fighting to sell the house before you can. Talk about competition and stress..
Bill is correct. Doing it part time is going to be difficult. Here's why: 1. There's licensing costs. They vary state to state but could run up a few thousand dollars. 2. There's monthly fees to your brokerage, real estate board, and NAR (National Association of Realtors) if you choose to join 3. There's costs for running business: advertising, business cards, cell phone bill, computer, gas, car insurance, etc 4. If you're buying real estate, would you expect your agent to work at YOUR beck and call? Obviously. So if you can't provide service when THEY need it, are you really doing your job? Not really. I'm not saying you're a slave, but you need to be accessible. No client wants to hear sorry I didn't get back to you for 7 hours, I was doing my other job. In that period of time, you could have had an offer expire on you, or something could have happened like you missed a multiple offer situation etc. If you're good at real estate and you have a lot of clients who are currently looking to buy and sell, then YES that's wonderful and you could potentially make LOTS of money. But the industry is a marathon, not a sprint. Don't expect to get rich in months or even 1-2 years. It's about building a reputation and working hard at it. If you're not 100% committed, your clients will sense that. It's fine to keep it to make a deal with the occasional friend or family member, but other than that it won't generate a lot of income.
