I had a customer ask me what it’s like to be in real estate.
The truth is that the average Realtor makes about $35,000 a year before expenses. I have a friend who looked into the stats and determined that out of 25,000 real estate agents in the GTA, 5,000 sold one home last year. So it’s a little bit of Pareto’s principle – 20% of the people do 80% of the business. I think in reality it’s more like 90/10. For every Sam McDadi who sells 500 homes a year, there are 50 agents selling one or two.
Failure rate is very high in the first two years, and it’s about $5,000 in courses, most of which would be considered easy college/hard high school level exams.
I am personally an advocate of much more educational requirements to siphon off some of the riff-raff agents and concentrate the quality to a much smaller number of agents.
But anyways, expect to work really hard. There’s no such thing as “get rich quick” – it’s repetitive, focused action, day after day, that leads to results. Anybody who is successful will tell you the same thing. It’s a lot more grunt work than people think. Do I work as hard as the guy who lifts heavy concrete blocks for twelve hours a day? Not physically, but my brain and my emotions can feel the wear and tear just as much as the guy doing physical labour.
We take on a huge responsibility every time we help someone move, and the pressure can really build up sometimes.
Soooo… to summarize:
If you can survive for your first couple of years, you build momentum with people who trust you, if you treat them well. Your business grows as a result, and you can focus less time on attracting people you don’t know, which makes things a bit more easier.
The nice part about real estate is that your overhead is low. If you open a pizza store, you spend $100,000 in equipment and supplies. In real estate, you need a phone and a computer, a clean car and some clothes that aren’t embarrasing.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
