Real Estate career ? Need advice (Nassau: sales, rental, broker)

[Pennywishes]

Hello all,

I know LI is saturated with real estate agents, but curious about a career change. If you're an agent or know someone who is... Any advice?

Did you take the classes online or in person? If so, where?
Did you go with a big RE chain or a smaller, neighborhood one?
Pros/cons?
Do you still work full time in another field?
Did you or would you consider becoming a broker?
What do you think you need as far as traits?

Any advice or insight to your experience would be great

Thank you

[SandyJet]

Real Estate is not a Career.

[tj2013]

Yes real estate sucks its defintely not a career. Brokers are just as slimey and unethical as used car salesman. You will spend a ton of extra money on gas, dry cleaning and waste your precious nights and weekends showing houses to mostly unqualified buyers. You will be used as a glorified recptionist to answer phones since broker owners are very cheap and dont like to pay help. Im sure you will here some great war stories on how some make six figures as they get into there 20 year old car.
Best advice stay away from real estate a complete dead end and waste of time. By the time your commissions are split 100 ways your basically left with peanuts.

[mosdefinitely]

Real estate developers can make a lot of money in Nassau if they start off with money to flip houses (aka buy them and rebuild them then sell for a gain). Real estate career? It's risky.

[TomMoser]

Originally Posted by Pennywishes

Hello all,

I know LI is saturated with real estate agents, but curious about a career change. If you're an agent or know someone who is... Any advice?

Did you take the classes online or in person? If so, where?
Did you go with a big RE chain or a smaller, neighborhood one?
Pros/cons?
Do you still work full time in another field?
Did you or would you consider becoming a broker?
What do you think you need as far as traits?

Any advice or insight to your experience would be great

Thank you

I would suggest that you take the salesperson course in person. It will give you the opportunity to ask questions and also allow you to network with current and future agents who you may do business with.

The big chains will give you formalized training but will also take more of your money (you will pay a franchise fee on top of your split on every deal). If you go with a smaller broker be sure to ask about what kind of training you can expect. Some firms will pair you up with a mentor for your first few months and this can be very helpful for a new agent.

You can work full time in another field, but that will obviously limit the amount of time that you will be able to spend practicing real estate. The most successful agents work 60 plus hours a week.

Worry about whether or not to become a broker down the line.

Some important traits are a good work ethic, as well as computer and people skills.

My best advice is to treat your new real estate career as a business. No matter who your broker is you are essentially in business for yourself. Write out a business plan and stick to it. Budget your money. Contrary to what many would have you believe, it is not an easy business. It takes time to build. But if you work hard and are ethical you can do very well for yourself.

[Pennywishes]

Thank you all !

[Mumbly Joe]

Only the very best (and usually also the most crooked) can make a living at real estate sales. The rest either work for free/very little, or get jettisoned out.

It's a do9g-eat-dog industry. You either end up becoming a cannibal; or get eaten.

Of the people I've known who tried it/got their RE loicense, not one of them made it more than a few months before realizing what I've said, above.

They're all now either working in other fields- having wasted time and money in their RE pursuit; or are involved in other aspects of RE, in which the sales license is irrelevant- such as being rental managers or house-flippers or landlords (And I wouldn't recommend those last two, on LI)

One lady I knew signed-on with Century21- as they offered training and everything. It was like becoming a slave!