What is the best way to succeed as a Real Estate Agent?

[L. E. Gant]

Good luck with the career!

Essentially, real estate, like most of the selling game depends on WHO you know, and how many people that accounts for. If you know enough people, you can do extremely well in real estate, especially if you really listen to what they want, both in getting a house sold and in buying a house.

The first couple of years are really tough, unless you have a good list of maybe 100 families who are going to buy or sell in the next two to five years. That's 100 houses you can potentially get a commission on in the five years. In reality, you might get between 10% and 20% of those sales, even if the people are good friends.

If you have that base, you can build up a very good database of people who are buying from you and will want to sell through you, so that, after about five years, you can have a decent income.

If you don't have the base of around 100 people who will buy/sell in those first five years, you'll find it tough to get really going. the best bet is to get attached to someone who is already successful in the game, and is willing to take on a "buyer's agent" until the person has their own database. Someone who'll sit and take phone calls and do the low-end houses for less than the full commission, and run the adverbs and all the rest of the donkey work. But there's only a few agents who are up at the top who do so, and they have all kinds of people waiting for the next opening.

Think of it - every year, especially the good ones, the number of people who get into real estate is about half the number already in the game, Most will get two to three sales from the people they already know, and then flounder, so between half and 60% of those in the game right now won't be in a year's time. the more established agents think of these in-comers as a waste of resources - there are thousands of them, and that adds up to tens of thousands of possible sales that won't go to the established agents.

I really hope you won't regret getting into real estate, and wish you the best of luck!