Future prospects for real estate agent? (licenses, average, reputation, career)

[GodBlesstheUSA]

Possibly looking at a career change. What do people think about becoming a real estate agent in a major city like Boston?

Can you envision at some point in 10-30 years where the agent (middleman) becomes obsolete?

Do you think the future trend for this industry is good or bad?

Thanks

[RobinsonCrusoe]

Looks decent. faster than average growth over the next decade.

Real Estate Brokers and Sales Agents

whether or not some anonymous guy on a forum thinks real estate agents will be obsolete shouldn't matter to you.

but if you really must know, then no. real estate agents possess such specialized knowledge, understanding, and the necessary legal and business connections to make them very much relevant now and forever.

[brightdoglover]

Everyone and his brother and sister got licenses during the go-go years. "I'll sell a house on an occasional Saturday morning and make all this money."
I think there might be plenty of real estate agents in the area, but how many good ones?

It can go either way. It takes time to build up a reputation. The party years are over for good.

[zoomzoom3]

I would stay away from that industry. The top 1% do 90% of the business in that industry & that means if you're not part of the top 1%, you'll never get ahead. A lot of areas were oversaturated with realtors. Some cities with populations of 500,000 had 2,000 realtors for instance. 50 realtors could handle a city of 500,000.

[grmi66]

Used to have a connection that would let me and my business partner peek at the title records in a big southwestern city so we could market to the top real estate producers. Even in the booming 2000's, 5% of the agents were selling most of the properties. The agents that we marketed to all had a couple of things in common, they specialized in 1-2 neighborhoods or markets, advertised heavily, been in the business 10+ years and had name recognition. All of these agents had a staff of people that helped them buy and sell properties, your best bet would be to find an agent like this and get on their staff and learn.

[slackjaw]

I'm a real-estate agent but actually only do it to have access to houses to steal prescription drugs like oxycontin, xanax, vicodin, and percodan. Then we have drug parties where we drink wine and pop pills, sometimes sleeping for 30 hours in a row. Sucked the one time Leslie had to be taken to the ER, aside from that it is usually a good time.

That's the only benefit to real estate right now I think.