A career in Real Estate
Real estate can be one of the most challenging and exciting career opportunities that you can be in. It can be one of the highest paying and most rewarding jobs that you'll ever have, or it could be one of the lowest. Most fall somewhere in between.
If you are considering a career in real estate, you should ask yourself if you have the basic skills required to make it work, because you'll be wearing many hats! First off you need to be highly motivated and work well with minimal supervision. There will be no one hovering over you to make sure that you get to work on time, and put in an honest days work. That being said, there is plenty of training available to cover almost every aspect of the business, and a lot of it won't cost you a penny once you've laid out your initial licence fees. Being a real estate agent is no different from running your own business. That's precisely what you are doing. All businesses have obligations, challenges and expenses. If you run your real estate business, like a business, you will probably do well enough.
You'll need to be very committed to the task, because the failure ratio is quite high in this business. There are far more hopefuls completing the course, than can manage to maintain any sort of momentum past their first couple of years. Most people think that it is an easy business, and that once they have their business cards, they will have a license to print money! The truth of the matter is, that when you are first starting out you'll need to work harder than ever to earn yourself a reputation for being reliable, on-task and for getting the job done. You won't want to have to rely on your friends too much, because they'll know that you are only just getting your feet wet and that may not give them much confidence in your abilities. That means you'll have to do plenty of cold-calling and door-knocking to get yourself some contacts.
I would really like to emphasize that if you are not going into real estate full time, please reconsider. If you won't jump in with both feet, you'll never really learn how to swim. The industry moves along at a tremendous clip and one needs to be fully absorbed in order to keep up with the volume of information coming our way. If you are only planning on doing one or two sales a year, then please do your customers a favour by not even holding yourself out as a real estate practitioner. You will in all likelihood be more of a liability to them and to yourself, should you ever be faced with actually writing up and negotiating a transaction.
Forget about scheduled time off for a while, and be prepared to be on call and ready to run on a moments notice. You'll not have the luxury of calling your own shots in that regard. Your clients will need you on a moments notice when the iron is hot for striking! Until you have a team put together, you'll have to carry that burden on your own. When your clients are enjoying a weekend at the lake with their family, you'll be doing a buyers interview at the office. While they are relaxing in Tahiti, you'll be marketing your listings, and ensuring that you'll be around when someone expresses an interest. In fact, you won't have hardly any "me" time at all unless & until you establish guidelines for yourself and are able to implement them.
If I haven't talked you out of it yet, read on! At time of writing, the ticket for admission is about $6500.00. A breakdown of these fees is shown here. On top of these fees, you'll need things like an electronic key, lock boxes, signage, business cards, promotional material and other stationary. Add about $1500 on to that to cover these incidentals. There are ongoing educational costs of about $500 per year. You should have fairly good vehicle to drive your clients around in, and get to your appointments, and have a flexile schedule so that you can accommodate to the needs of your customers. You should have a state-of-the-art computer, and cell phone with a high usage plan. You'll receive no vacation pay, pension or health care plans, medical insurance or any other benefit to which employees are normally entitled, so don't forget to make provisions for those. Some months, you may not have any closings, so make sure that you've got enough in your account to draw from. Don't forget about advertising costs which typically make up the largest portion of any REALTOR®s expense budget. Board fees will range from $250 to $750 per month on average, depending on the amount of services you use.
You'll be remitting your own income tax which is probably about 25% of your gross income, and also remit GST on a monthly or quarterly basis. If there's anything left over at the end you can go hog wild with it as they say. In a matter of months or years you should be doing several trades a month provided you've done everything right, and you'll have "made it".
You'll need to cover all of your auto expenses, and the brokerage will charge you a monthly fee for their services, as well as a transaction fee. Some brokerages will charge you a sign-up fee. There are as many office plans as there are brokerages. On average, expect to pay several hundred dollars a month to your brokerage for the services which they provide you. In addition, the transaction fees run around $250.00 for every "end" that you do. This will vary considerably from place to place. You should find a brokerage which you feel confident is a good match. There are loads of franchised offices around the city. Some of them are publicly traded or have head offices in the US, or elsewhere. These types of offices often have the highest fees, because they need to pay a portion of all their earnings, to the head office as part of their franchise agreement to use as they see fit. There are also lots of no-fee or low fee brokerages around now which offer very limited support or services. You will pay for all of your own printing. Just today I picked up a toner cartridge at Staples which was over $150.00, and my printer has FIVE of them!!!
Here are some of the regular tasks that a full time REALTOR® would normally engage in, during the course of their day.
- Prospecting for clients in whatever form that takes
- Preparing their marketing material
- Tending to their listings
- Showing Properties
- Upgrading their real estate education
- Attending Seminars & Meetings
- Researching Properties
- Upgrading their marketing material
- More prospecting
- Arranging showings
- Doing an open house
- Presenting offers
- Listing appointments
- Buyer Interviews
- Etc. etc.
One thing that we do not do is stand on the curb hollering "House for Sale!" (Although I will admit to having done that once or twice) We rely heavily on our associates to get our listings sold. The odds are, the listing agent will seldom be the one who brings in a buyer. That is why we have the MLS® system.
I chose CIR Realty for a number of reasons. They are a large locally-owned family business (The largest independent real estate company in Canada), with an excellent reputation, and are connected with some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the city. They have a number of strategically located offices here in Calgary, as well as satellite offices in the smaller centers. The offices have plenty of parking, and they are in very good locations. They are modern and spacious and make a good first impression. They offer client viewing & interview rooms, and are in my opinion the most high tech real estate offices in the city. In addition, they have an adequate amount of highly trained back-up personnel who will be invaluable in assisting you to get started. They'll also help look after the little things when you're not around.
Each office has a full-time manager. They are non-competing managers, and therefore are among the best in the city! How a manager can run a brokerage and in addition, sell real estate at the same time is beyond me, and yet many brokerages still do just exactly that! CIR has been around for over twenty-five years, so they really know the business and will be able to help you out when you find yourself backed into a corner. They have many flexible plans to suit your own particular situation. When I first started at CIR, it didn't take me too long to figure out that CIR runs a very tight ship! They don't leave anything to chance, and meticulously plan everything. That was very appealing to me because it's how I run my business!
Another thing I like at CIR is the people. The team approach to selling is very evident. You'll not get lost in the cracks here. There is always someone around to give you support. We are like family, all looking out for each other. That's huge on my list!
I am convinced that you'll find CIR to be a good match. I would like to extend a personal invitation to you. Why not give me a call right now, and introduce yourself. I'll make it a point to come and meet with you, and to personally introduce you to the office manager in your area. They will be able to fill you in on all the details of their own particular office, as I'm sure I haven't even scratched the surface! I want you to succeed while at the same time, going into it with your eyes open.
