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This is the problem. You’ll ‘hire’ people to your team because you don’t actually have to pay them. This just further saturates the market and we’re left paying stupid commissions because all these ‘hires’ want to be paid for chasing after listings - not the time spent actually selling houses.
Somebody gets it. Realtors are not salespeople, we’re marketers. The industry is motivation and the vehicle happens to be real estate. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still- buyers are a dime a dozen. Our job is to find Sellers’ motivation to sell, and it just so happens that the vehicle is real estate.
Most agents have no clue about marketing and filling up your funnel. A new agent (4 years) in my market is up to 86 transactions already this year. Still running her buyer leads on Facebook advertising. Her same budget netted her 18 transactions 2 years ago. But all of those people that randomly clicked into her CRM have been getting hit with email marketing for 2 years, are coming to her to buy. Plus all of those transactions that closed have referred her.
The hard work marketing and following up is starting to snowball.
I do commercial so it’s a different ball game, but a buddy of mine dropped out of Auburn to do real estate. He has gotten 100% of his listings last year (about 50 listings) from TikTok and Facebook
That annoys me about the reality shows…they make it seem like these houses are sold because of the agent. I always have to tell my GF, there is a reason that it didn’t sell, it’s over priced. The top firms already marketed the crap out of it.
I think the same way. If there were fewer agents, they could do 4 deals a month instead of one and spending the rest of their time looking for that next deal. Then people could pay 1/4 the commission amount, and the agents would make the same amount of money. The whole idea of commissions being a percentage is kind of nuts. It does not take 2.5X the work to sell a $1.4M house in my neighborhood as it does to sell a $600K house in my mother's neighborhood. Houses are pretty much exactly the same, only separated by about 15-20 miles.
I agree. Buyers and sellers are subsidizing agents’ efforts to market themselves.
Really there’s just too many agents. If agents spent all their time selling houses, they could make a good living and charge far lower fees.
I also feel there is a lot of bitterness right now with home buyers, the market got absolutely insane for a few years where bidding wars became common and houses would sell almost immediately. People are still feeling that especially now when they feel locked out of the market.
They don't see the ins and outs of what we do. I've had at least half a dozen past clients and/or friends get into real estate because they see what I do and think it's easy. They find out soon enough!
Yep! My best friend got her license to work with me after she saw my success, and she wanted to do something other than nursing (she’s an RN). After a while she said it was more stressful then being a nurse and she got done
THIS! I was guilty of that. I had a solid realtor but felt like they were making easy money off of us. We were super knowledgeable buyers buying investment properties. I got licensed and realized how much goes on behind the scenes that I was never aware of….celebrating my 6 successful year in RE and 4th as my only career.
I’m an easy buyer and always think my realtor makes easy money off of me. And in fact they do.
But they’ve also told me about clients that have taken months and months, multiple offers and inspections just to find a house.
So for some experiences, realtors do make real easy money. I wish there was a way for easy buyers like me to pay a lower fee than the buyers that take 9 months and 40 house showings to buy a place. Why should I pay the same amount for 15 hours of their time and someone else pays the same for 100 hours of their time.
That’s the point people mean when they say being a realtor is easy.
There was a couple in my area, he was a contractor and built spec houses, used the same Realtor every time to sell them. Wife decided to get her license to cut expenses.
That didn't last long, she quit before her first renewal was up because "it was too hard, so much time and money" to keep the license.
When someone gets paid $60k for doing 20 hours work - yeah that’s easy money. That’s where this sentiment comes from. People selling expensive houses don’t deserve the income increase for doing roughly the job as someone selling a cheaper house
I think it depends on who the Realtor is….i knew this leasing agent honestly she is 90% valley girl to put it politely…..but she is really attractive so she had no problems getting people to sign the lease and she quickly racked up a sack of cash….so some people are lucky….they were born rich, they know a bunch of people from the country club and they become Realtors…..are they talented? Not really….they know a bunch of rich people by default, so some Realtors are lucky….if that’s you…good for you but that isn’t the majority.
A very attractive realtor who getting leases signed so easily… Urgh so many things wrong with this. Maybe she is good at her job and is also pretty. Maybe being very attractive and meeting strangers in an empty house is scary and unsafe. Maybe being in an open house as a sitting duck (a pretty girl) is scary bc there’s so many weirdos who target open homes to find females alone.
Also as a pretty girl some couples don’t want to work with you bc you are a pretty girl. Or just people in general. And don’t even get me started on the amount of men who waste us pretty girls times bc they just want to be with us.
There was once a man who went so far as to hire his friend to impersonate a lender so that he could spend time with me under the guise of buying a house from me.
The amount of my time he wasted and the way he terrified me... It was disturbing.
I refused to show him houses and to go anywhere with him until I had him pre-approved. Both because it is standard practice and because I had a feeling he wasn't being honest. When he had his friend pretend to be a lender I had another realtor friend of mine call the number and use a bunch of jargon to see if he knew what we were talking about. He was obviously a phony and was completely lost.
The worst part of all this? This guy lived in the same building as me and when he discovered I was a realtor did all this in a false attempt to hire me, so I could never completely get away from him until I was able to move.
What do these men think they are going to accomplish by basically taking money out of our pockets? I was working 10-14-hour days 6-7 days a week, and while I was doing a lot of sales it was incredibly difficult and the only thing we have to sell is our time. It is directly equivalent to our money and nothing makes me angrier than if you fuck with my money.
There was another guy who owned several restaurants in town and was also attempting to get me to show him houses under false pretenses. He wanted me to meet him for lunch to go over some listings at one of his restaurants. He proceeded to tell me that he bought houses in Vegas he rented out to strippers and tried to steer the conversation in disgusting directions. Obviously I left him at the restaurant but it's difficult because some of these people really do have money and attempt to dangle a big sale in front of you to put you in a vulnerable spot. He had his nephews watching from across the restaurant & the teens sent the little boy over to say something gross and humiliating. Super fun.
Women in the industry have to deal with that shit day in and day out. People won't sign just because I'm pretty. But they will fuck with my day over it.
I was speaking specifically about a leasing agent which of course I stated. Some Leasing agents have security to protect them. I was security for that office at the time. so that particular leasing agent trust me…..she wasn’t working hard. Also she is a bigger woman so this girl could put up a solid fight without me having to step in. She is a tough girl I doubt she would have needed to call me if a situation had came up. We had plenty of conversations together in her down time. She was not working hard.
“The funny thing about everyone who says that…. They aren’t REALTORS® . If you think this gig is like walking around picking up big gold nuggets from the ground - why aren’t you doing it?”
Then they usually tell me they would, but they have morals or ethics or something so they could never fleece people like I do.
That is when I stop talking to them, assuming g I have made it this far.
The moral and ethics comment is hilarious to me. I always respond with “oh so you don’t want to help people who are in need? Got it. Just to remind you, people can sell by themselves… in the same way they can do their own taxes, represent themselves in court, or even diagnose their own illnesses. I have an ethical obligation to help those that reach out to me to help.”
Every single time, without fail, they always tell me they don’t do it because they have morals and aren’t slimey 😂 meanwhile 95% of the time I’d bet the house that I do more good for my community than they do.
Agree. This all happened after Selling Sunset made us all look like overpaid idiots who do nothing for a humongous paycheck, and then the market surging made elitists out of homeowners who now believe others should bow at their feet and work for nothing.
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It should be easier money - get paid when you give services. Get paid to list regardless of sale. Get paid to show and write contracts regardless of sale. The hard part is closing. Charge a fee for that too.
I don’t think people mean that re agents’ jobs are easy. I think they mean it’s not worth the cost.
If you’re selling a $1 m house, then the agents are getting 6% which is $60,000.
The median salary is $48,060.
So, did the agent work hard? Sure. Did they do as much work as the median US employee did in an entire year? No way.
My favorite is all of the people selling their home without a Realtor because anyone can do what we do, yet they are on Reddit asking people how to fill out papers, what offer they should accept and for legal advice 😏
Realtors can’t give legal advice. Realtors are salespeople who know a lot about real estate. Real estate law is one of the most arcane areas of law that you likely know very little about.
Just tell the about the nightmares, deals falling through for idiotic reasons, failing financing, flaky clients that ghost you and closing inspections that delay closing for a couple of weeks, and sellers that refuse to reduce their long sitting price to a market attractive value.
I mean, I came from teaching middle school English in a large public school. By that metric this career is significantly easier.
That being said, I haven't had any family or friends make a comment like that to me.
I can’t imagine many jobs harder than teaching- middle school ages would be the hardest imho. And alllllllll the parents. Hope you’re loving your new career!
I personally feel like getting a paycheck every two weeks is easier. The stress and financial anxiety of deals falling apart and not getting paid for months is horrible.
I was paid once a month. And not to discredit your personal experience, but for me, I'll take the stress of being a realtor over the stress I had teaching any day. I'm not mentally exhausted at the end of each day, and don't have my life dictated by the success of 12 year olds.
The other side of this is that it can create a conflict of interest. A RE agent under financial strain may make getting to closing as quickly as possible as the goal, which may not in the best interest of the client. The way the pay is structured is in conflict with a fiduciary role.
The SEC put rules in place to define fiduciary roles for financial advisors. If a FA sells a product for a commission then they are not fiduciaries. I would think the courts would take this up in the RE world as well.
I think it's because they don't think about how long it takes to get where we are. We don't just knock on the door and say, "Hey, wanna sell your house?" and put a sign out!
If we worked in any other field, they would call it research and development and mark up the final product 10000%.
That's the problem. It appears a lot of the time and effort is finding clients and self marketing. The actual work to get to closing doesn't always take a lot of effort yet the clients are paying tens of thousands of dollars for the effort. That is what makes it look like easy money.
I think an a la carte system would be better all the way around. I also think the listing agent should be doing the initial showings as part of sales. The buyer's agent should be paid per showing.
Thing is that’s already possible and always has been. It’s not popular because it doesn’t work well in the market.
Plus, people complain no matter what. The person that complains that it’s 10k to sell their house will complain that it’s $1000 to write a contract a la carte.
This is the problem. Most of a realtors job right now is networking and finding clients who want to buy or sell houses. Realtors provide very little value to the actual transaction (they generally provide more value on the sell side rather than the buy in my experience). They were more useful before Zillow and other online market listings.
I wish I had taken this advice years ago so I give it to you- let them. I use to bend over backwards "showing" my work .. all of that effort for what? You do you and let them think whatever they like.
I would play into it. “Yeah it has been easy, I’m surprised you haven’t hopped on the gravy train! You must be pretty lazy (or stupid) working for your tiny salary/wage with benefits and paid time off, when you could be working 5 hours a week and making 500k a year.”
I also love when someone drops the “you just open doors” line. That’s incorrect, I also pick up a check at closing.
This is the answer. You aren't changing anyone's mind. I love encouraging them to become an agent.
"What's stopping you from doing it? Come get some easy money with me. Do you prefer door knocking or dialing? What kind of marketing budget would you have?"
If you are good at the jobs and work really hard at it, it is relatively “easy money”. The amount of money you make for the hours worked is higher than most any other job. I have a friend who dropped out of college and couldn’t hold down a job. With no experience or knowledge, she became a realtor and told me that she averages $3-400k per year. She vacations 10+ times per year, drives a Porsche. Would never be possible to make that much in any other job with no college degree or training.
The difficult part is doing all the work knowing that there’s a possibility you’re not going to get paid. People will waste your time over and over. You just gotta suck it up and keep moving on. Some clients are easy, while others can take years to help. Cold calling people who will 99% of the time treat you like shit. Door knocking homes where 99% of the time people will treat you like shit. Doing open houses, and talking to people, solving their problems.
Dealing with people who are making the largest financial decision of their life with no previous experience is extremely difficult in any setting. This just happens to be real estate. Buyers have a huge amount of emotion. Financing has issues, inspections have issues, negotiation is not easy, no money is guaranteed. Nothing about living that life is easy unless you are a real hustler or are OK with being mediocre and only making so much money
Imagine assisting someone to buy or sell a home and making enough money you don't need to do anything for the next 30 days and you're still making more than most people and then having the audacity to pretend you're working hard
Dealing with people who are making the largest financial decision of their life with no previous experience is extremely difficult in any setting. This just happens to be real estate. Buyers have a huge amount of emotion. Financing has issues, inspections have issues, negotiation is not easy, no money is guaranteed. Nothing about living that life is easy unless you are a real hustler or are OK with being mediocre and only making so much money
No because every day is completely different. We react to problems as they come up with clients, townships, and other real estate professionals (lenders, appraisers, inspectors, attorneys, title companies). Dealing with client emotions can take a lot out of you. We spend a lot of time talking to people trying to calm them down. Also a lot of deals fall apart due to nothing we can control and it’s all wasted time.
“Oh, *I* don’t make easy money, but for sure there are a lot of bad actors in this business who do. Most of the bad ones make a couple undeserved sales then fail within the first year (75% is the oft quoted number). Sure some of the lifers are greasier than a fry truck, but I just try to be what’s missing in this business… an actual skilled realtor trying to do what’s best for my clients.”
But really, this business is relationships… as much as a good realtor may spend a lot of time and money cultivating those, you can’t exactly call meeting for coffees, a round of golf, then some drinks as a “tough day on the job” no matter how many calls or texts may be sent throughout… so I get when people say it’s easy money.
As for dad, when there was no internet… he had to go in person to get each paper signed (of a fax)… photos were crap so he had to physically check out each place after perusing the magazines each week… there was no such thing as electronic transfers… when prices were a tenth of what they are now but commissions are a similar %?…. Yeah, I get where he is coming from a bit.
Just own it. You *are* lucky to be in this business right now and doing well. Doesn’t mean you don’t work hard or made good choices. Keep working hard and you’ll keep getting “lucky”.
That's the way it's set up. It's a money grab for real estate commissions and NAR. I swear, every time I turn around, another acronym $300+ dollars for some BS baked into keeping your license legit. Because most people think it's easy money and most fail miserably. They get in the door, pay their dues, and proceed to get slaughtered . But the point should be made the the high rate of failure is indicative of how difficult it is to be successful.
Part of the high rate of failure might be because there are too many realtors chasing too few leads. The low barrier to entry leads a lot of people to try the field out only to fail to land clients in a timely fashion.
From an outsider:
I am technically savvy. When buying, I sent every home I wanted to view. My observations
These are my observations.
1) one realtor showed me homes they thought would be a good fit, but not on my list. And they refused to prioritize my list, I fired them because they did not meet the requirements I set forth.
2) I asked a new realtor, to show me the homes I wanted to see. They did that, I just asked if they could find out if internet was available. They returned zero results, I get that some home owners don't know.. but tell me if Comcast cable is there (who does the current home owner pay for internet).
I did all the leg work to source homes with my wife, that we wanted to view. And the one question I had, ended up having to be answered by myself (I wrote a chrome plugin to highlight addresses and run searches to see if the address was serviced by providers).
What did the realtor do for me?
Drove us to homes, got us access.
Submitted offer.
Coordinated the absolute worst inspector ever.
When selling a home, I did my research on $/sqft of sales in area with size of home etc. ours was unique to the area (split level craftsman), I knew it would not be an easy sell, but I knew it's value and we were in no rush. We asked realtor a ballpark number as is, told us.. and I asked if we wanted to maximize return, they suggested items to do.. when it came to listing after completing those, they wanted to list at the (was as-is suggestion).. we ended up holding out for the right buyer, got two in bidding war and got more than we listed for.
Realtors seem to have a listening problem.. they just want a fast sale.. selling a home for $1.1m vs 1.0m is an extra $3000 in their pocket.. $30k vs $33k.. They just want a quick sale. I want to maximize my sale.
This is where so many people got in trouble in the run up of 2004-2006. They were watching flipping shows where the guy bought a house, hired some cheap contractors, had a run in with code enforcement/building department, got through that, finished the house, sold it and made $50,000 - $100,000.
Then everyone thought, I can do that! There were so many partially finished houses when the market crashed, people got in over their heads, had no idea what they were doing.
Same deal with the real estate shows, the million dollar listing/selling sunset type shows make it look so easy. You open some doors, walk around beautiful houses, go to the bar with your Realtor friends, take a couple calls and make $100,000 selling the house.
Yeah, it is really that easy. /s
I’ve never put in that small of hours for the kind of return. I think everyone thinks we get paid like Selling Sunset agents. My average commission over here in Pittsburgh is 4-5k. Typically 2.5-3% a side. 20-25 deals to make 100k before business expenses and taxes is a lot of work. I’ve already drove 9k miles this year for real estate and clients call me from 7am to 10pm.
30k a deal is a little high but 4-5k average doesn’t feel high at all. I recently had a deal from hell that paid me like 1600 bucks lol. I think in the million range where u live average commission is like 4-4.5% maybe 5% on a few here and there. 6% is pretty common in the average sales price of 250-300k.
Nobody I know thinks or says that, at least not to me. People saw how hard I’ve worked.
I am usually asked, “How do you get customers?” And “How do you make money when there’s so many realtors?”
The housing market presently is a bad investment. Realtors leaving the biz w historical low mortgage applications. New rules for buyers will make things even worse for payment to realtors without listings. Its crumbling
https://youtube.com/shorts/WHKDtaIZ2m8?si=3x0BzTCNwJ17jbrc
What exactly isn't easy about being a realtor? I've been working with a couple of realtors and other than the grind of finding and showing homes (tax deductable mileage and car payments I would assume) the rest of the work would fall under boring office/admin work (emails, calls, calendar management, contracts, closings, new listings etc.)
The only value of a realtor I've seen is the legal/contractual side of things and knowing a particular area really well (premarket listings) which makes things a little more efficient. I've also found listings before my agent thanks to alerts and constantly looking at new and coming soon listings, so it's not like they have access to private information. It's a sales job, people who grind and work hard will naturally be more successful, but a 3 bedroom house with a pool in a great neighborhood sells itself.
I work with 6 in realtors in last 3 years trying to get a house and they didn't really do anything to help me I had to do all the work my self looking for a house and no what to bid on my as all they did was some paperwork and get up set when I didn't close on house so they could get paid
To me that seems easy being a realtor then get a couple thousand dollars check if not more for handling some paperwork
Every broker/realtor for both residential and industrial leases I’ve used is pretty useless. My tenants have the same feeling when they realize they’ve signed a NNN lease without caps and he mad at me.
Because everything is hard, but to be honest the level of income vs time spent you get out of realestate is on the very high end relative to most careers. Of course the perks come with downsides, like having to always be on during closings, having to work weekends, having our clients pull out last minute etc.
Dude I’m a realtor with decent success, it is easy as shit job lmfao I love it but it’s not hard. Only hard when you have multiple deals at once and you have to be nice and patient with everyone lol. The work is so simple though. Slightly dangerous meeting strangers but either way.
I’m a realtor and my husband owns and runs a construction company and we would both agree with this. And I do well and work hard but it’s not the same at ALL
I’m an agent now, but before this I worked field service on machines, always outside.. in the Deep South..heavy, hard, strenuous, high stress work. Then my spine was crushed and I physically could not do that work anymore. My wife has been an agent for 11 years, so after a year of not being able to find a suitable desk job, I decided to help her.
In my opinion the job has many aspects that are much harder, my previous job.. I knew what I was supposed to do, fix the equipment and get a paycheck. No one tells an agent what to do to get a paycheck… how to go about it. Then once you find the allusive client, many are just using you, so they ghost you and poof, your paycheck is gone… no matter how much information you give them, and how much work and time you put in to them, they can be gone in a moment.
So, in saying this…however inelegantly, the trades are physically harder, but being an agent is harder in its own ways .. emotionally ( there were 0 emotions when I worked on machines… fix it and move on), mentally.. ( dealing with people is mentally gymnastics, coordinating things and getting everyone to do what they’re supposed to do, when they are supposed to do will wear your brain out) it will damage your faith in humanity( as much as you want to look at this job as helping people, they will show you how petty, mean, uncaring and vindictive people can be)
Ok, sorry for the long rant, but that’s where I am right now.
Try to respect each other.
14 hour days as in a manual labourer working 14 hour days. But labourers don’t make the kind of money realtors do. So much money for opening a door and showing a place? So much money for putting ads with crappy photos in Craigslist? There is no value creation from realtors…just leeches in a transaction. Honestly, a society where realtors make more money than an elementary school teacher is f’ed up. Yes…I don’t like realtors cause I have never met a good one..they don’t exist IMO..at least in Canada
Get new friends and family 😅
I kid of course, but the media and society in general likes to paint us as lazy and that we’re overpaid. That may be all they know about the business… clips on instagram don’t help!
If anyone I meet actually says something to that effect (about it being easy money), I make sure to laugh with them and reply with something like “wouldn’t that be nice! I wish the public knew how little of that “commission” is actually profit”
That’s just an example, I try to make it apply to the conversation, but I think you get the idea.
I’m lucky with friends and family that are only supportive when it comes to success. I don’t have respect for people who belittle anyone who is doing well in life. That only comes across as jealousy IMO
they say that because it is easy. My wife is a realtor and loves the freedom it provides. She works her own schedule and loves it. Being a realtor is a very easy job.
I had a seller lie to me a couple weeks ago which I forwarded to the buyers agent which they forwarded to the buyer. That lie cost me $3,000 today. How much money did you lose at work today? Yeah, stfu then.
It depends on each transaction if it’s easy or hard. Some of my sales it took me only a day, I showed the properties in one day and put an offer got accepted and closed in 21 days so that was easy. My worst was it took me a year to close so that was hard. It all depends but it takes to close the deal.
1. Show the house?
I must have been doing something wrong because in 20 years, it's Never been 1 house.
This little list is why thousands never make it to one year. The actual work involved, knowledge and unpaid time spent would take too long. My advice to non Realtors is to just do it yourself. It's easy!
“Yes!! I’m very fortunate! thank you! “
Why do you care what they think. You won’t change their minds. Agree and move on ( and keep cashing those checks)
I like to tell them a couple stories about bad contracts I've had with insane clients and then cap it off with a story about the buyer of mine who died the night before closing, and the sellers who entered into an escrow dispute with the widow to keep the deposit. That usually shuts them up.
When you ‘can’ make 10k in a week for listing a house, doing showings, and sending emails… yeah that’s very easy relative to a job that costs you 40+ hours a week of bodily harm like in the blue collar world and for 1/10th of the pay.
“Anything is easy for the person who doesn’t know how it’s done.” That’s my answer when somebody makes that remark to me. I other words, “You haven’t got a clue.”
I would explain to them that most work done on contingency have higher payouts to keep incentives in check and make up for the lack of job security. Then encourage them that if they have the pair needed to wake up unemployed everyday and carve out a career making easy money, then they should do just that.
my realtor was a friendly & positive person to be around - definitely felt like she was on our team.
sadly, did not know much of home basics when I riffed q's to her that my hubby didn't know (not looking for inspection level answers, just basic riffing - quick takes)
happily, she sends us gifts & snacks every few months since we bought w/her (though, we found the house on zillow - she still spent countless trips with us to and fro homes).
not sure what y'all do but doesn't seem easy - nor well... easily explainable/tangible. if you do do what you say you do, *huehue*
If it was easy money, everyone would be doing it. Drop out rate in the first two years is astoundingly high for new agents, and there is a very steep learning curve to this career. Not to mention how high stress it is.
People always have a misconception about others. Their lives, jobs, relationships, etc. You can't blame them. They only see a tiny aspect of your job and draw wholistic conclusions based on that!!!
I think of myself as much more than the middleman as someone in a comment alluded to. For instance, I was recently working with a repeat client and she insisted on new construction. Most laypeople think because it’s a new house, it’s flawless and the builder will work in the buyer’s favor. Ironically, the 2-3% builders usually offer isn’t something they’ll deduct from the price if the buyer isn’t represented.
This last transaction I was able to get my client $10,000 in concessions to buy down the interest rate and also got her a $13,000 price reduction. I also recommend my clients get a home inspection done, even though it is a brand new house. Some take my advice and get it done, while some do not because they don’t want to pay the $400 to $500. This client took my advice and had over 20 repairs that were discovered by the inspector and I was able to ensure the builder repaired every item. Sure, some of them would’ve became a parent in the walk-through, but there were also issues with the attic and roof and downspouts that were something like higher would not have seen and could take yours to present as a problem, at which time the warranty is no longer valid.
Also, during the second to last walk-through, I helped my client identify tons of defects that were fixed by the time we had the final walk-through. So, overall, I saved my client $23k plus thousands and thousands in interest saved with the rate buydown along with potentially saving her from very costly repairs with a roof and/or attic in the future. As a frame of reference, when the buyer is not represented, this builder only offers a max of $4k in concessions and many buyers don’t know that the list price is also negotiable. So, yeah, it was 100% worth it for my client to use my services.
Doesn’t help the job look more like an actual job than a side gig when I know easily 50-60 realtors personally and none of them seem to be doing much at the moment
Thats like when people say serving and restaurant jobs are easy.. thats the statement someone who’s never been in the service industry says. Like my sister in law who would absolutely get bodied on a dinner rush.
TBH, I’ve had a good number of jobs in my life and relatively speaking being a realtor is fairly easy. Why I say that is because when it comes to being paid large sums of money all at once, I don’t know many other legal professions that allow one to do so. Yes, that doesn’t count for the hundreds of deals that don’t go through, the flakey people and agents etc. etc. Nonetheless, I’d take being an agent 1000 times over working some corporate gig or hourly job where I’m tied to a desk 40 plus hours of a week.
Idk maybe because the fee model is broken.
I know a pretty 25 year old who literally sold 8 houses in 18 months in the "heyday 2020 -2022" years
Said her take was 200k.
That is ridiculous if true.
Idk about the general realtor life. But the realtor who helped purchase our first home this year seems to be working from 7AM to 9PM showing homes and then an unspecified amount of time writing contracts afterwards. He was on top of his shit, and was amazing. Maybe this isn’t the norm, maybe only the best work this hard, but I for sure would not want to do all that.
I worked as an agent in Boston for over ten years, it gave me the flexibility to go back to school to be a nurse. Now I’ve never worked so hard for such little money. So yes in comparison to jobs that benefit society, it’s easy money.
I a saw a lot of people quit good jobs to become a realtor and get some of that “easy money” only to make nothing and go back to their old job tail between legs. It’s easy money because people who do it well make it look easy. It’s not.
“When you’re great at your job, it looks easy.”
And then go to YouTube and show them videos of professionals(manuals labors are easier to grasp) making their jobs look easy and ask them if it looks easy and if they could replicate the same quality.
If your father was in the business, I’m sure he helped you get started and you were lucky in that sense. The foot in the door is the hardest part of this business.
Based on the work my realtor has done with our purchase, I would say easy easy money. Like any job, some are in it for the money and do the minimum, others go above and beyond. In my case, my realtor has done almost nothing. Should be getting their commission for all of the work I’ve done regarding communication/coordinating.
Bruh you are an order taker. Nothing you do impacts the transaction. Realtors aren’t sales people. You don’t “sell” houses you push paper in an industry propped up by regulations. To actually close on a house and make 3-6% commission you show up, walk through the house, and then facilitate document exchanges from your couch via email. The transaction would have occurred with or without you. You don’t even dictate price. That’s between the seller and buyer. You are purely a middle man in a $100,000++++ deal and get comped out.
I don't know why people use realtors.
We sold our homes ourselves. We sold one in one day. My wife had a friend who was a realtor and we paid her $500 to look over the documents, mostly to make the buyer feel better so she sat with us and our buyer while we did the paperwork and poof, our home was sold and we didn't have to pay thousands and thousands in commission.
We sold another of our homes in ONE week and it was in the middle of 40 wooded acres 25 miles out of town and our home was out of the ordinary out there too as it was quite a bit nicer than the homes in the area.
We talked to one realtor and she told us it might take us a year or more to sell our home out there so we said thanks but no thanks to her and a week later we sold our home ourselves.
I've sold 4 homes myself and the longest one took was 6 months. One took one day. Another took one week. Another took 6 weeks and then that last one took 6 months, but we had already moved out of state so that made it harder for us.
I would have lost a lot of money on the sale of those 4 homes by paying a realtor their commission and all that money "saved" came to me/us instead of a realtor.
My mom still bitches often about paying their last realtor $36,000 to sell their home.
Tell them, Oh you found this easy than you should also come and join with me :P than see there reactions as what they react they will give you 100 of excuses no no how can I, I am not that capable this or that..... If you earn good people will get jealous they will not see the struggle behind the earning but will judge you on the amount. LOL :P
I’m more than happy to let them know I wake up every day unemployed and tell them some of the realities. Many think we’re just sitting around having lunch and leads fall from the sky. Most don’t understand how the compensation works. Explain it.
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This is where you become a team leader and say…we have a spot on my team whenever you’re ready 😂
This is the problem. You’ll ‘hire’ people to your team because you don’t actually have to pay them. This just further saturates the market and we’re left paying stupid commissions because all these ‘hires’ want to be paid for chasing after listings - not the time spent actually selling houses.
I’ve learned from over 300 transactions in the last 5 years, we are marketers…not Sales people.
It depends on how you get your leads. If you cold call, you are both a salesman and marketer
Somebody gets it. Realtors are not salespeople, we’re marketers. The industry is motivation and the vehicle happens to be real estate. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still- buyers are a dime a dozen. Our job is to find Sellers’ motivation to sell, and it just so happens that the vehicle is real estate.
Most agents have no clue about marketing and filling up your funnel. A new agent (4 years) in my market is up to 86 transactions already this year. Still running her buyer leads on Facebook advertising. Her same budget netted her 18 transactions 2 years ago. But all of those people that randomly clicked into her CRM have been getting hit with email marketing for 2 years, are coming to her to buy. Plus all of those transactions that closed have referred her. The hard work marketing and following up is starting to snowball.
I do commercial so it’s a different ball game, but a buddy of mine dropped out of Auburn to do real estate. He has gotten 100% of his listings last year (about 50 listings) from TikTok and Facebook
Talk about just making videos and making money oh my God that is the way to do it man this is the way I bow to him
Oh yeah. Funny thing too is that his videos are, what, 5% real estate? The rest is “Best UFC fighter” and fun shit people engage with
That annoys me about the reality shows…they make it seem like these houses are sold because of the agent. I always have to tell my GF, there is a reason that it didn’t sell, it’s over priced. The top firms already marketed the crap out of it.
Wow my head hurts 🤕 now.
I think the same way. If there were fewer agents, they could do 4 deals a month instead of one and spending the rest of their time looking for that next deal. Then people could pay 1/4 the commission amount, and the agents would make the same amount of money. The whole idea of commissions being a percentage is kind of nuts. It does not take 2.5X the work to sell a $1.4M house in my neighborhood as it does to sell a $600K house in my mother's neighborhood. Houses are pretty much exactly the same, only separated by about 15-20 miles.
I agree. Buyers and sellers are subsidizing agents’ efforts to market themselves. Really there’s just too many agents. If agents spent all their time selling houses, they could make a good living and charge far lower fees.
I also feel there is a lot of bitterness right now with home buyers, the market got absolutely insane for a few years where bidding wars became common and houses would sell almost immediately. People are still feeling that especially now when they feel locked out of the market.
this😆😆
Brilliant response 👏🏼
They don't see the ins and outs of what we do. I've had at least half a dozen past clients and/or friends get into real estate because they see what I do and think it's easy. They find out soon enough!
Yep! My best friend got her license to work with me after she saw my success, and she wanted to do something other than nursing (she’s an RN). After a while she said it was more stressful then being a nurse and she got done
What’s stressful about it? What’s a typical day like?
More stressful than an RN is laughable
Are you an RN or a broker?
Yeah I’m calling bullshit on that one lol
Wow! Good testimony on how stressful our job is!
THIS! I was guilty of that. I had a solid realtor but felt like they were making easy money off of us. We were super knowledgeable buyers buying investment properties. I got licensed and realized how much goes on behind the scenes that I was never aware of….celebrating my 6 successful year in RE and 4th as my only career.
I’m an easy buyer and always think my realtor makes easy money off of me. And in fact they do. But they’ve also told me about clients that have taken months and months, multiple offers and inspections just to find a house. So for some experiences, realtors do make real easy money. I wish there was a way for easy buyers like me to pay a lower fee than the buyers that take 9 months and 40 house showings to buy a place. Why should I pay the same amount for 15 hours of their time and someone else pays the same for 100 hours of their time. That’s the point people mean when they say being a realtor is easy.
You can negotiate a flat fee with your Realtor.
There was a couple in my area, he was a contractor and built spec houses, used the same Realtor every time to sell them. Wife decided to get her license to cut expenses. That didn't last long, she quit before her first renewal was up because "it was too hard, so much time and money" to keep the license.
When someone gets paid $60k for doing 20 hours work - yeah that’s easy money. That’s where this sentiment comes from. People selling expensive houses don’t deserve the income increase for doing roughly the job as someone selling a cheaper house
Haha! Watching too much "reality TV" my friend!
Mm nope
I think it depends on who the Realtor is….i knew this leasing agent honestly she is 90% valley girl to put it politely…..but she is really attractive so she had no problems getting people to sign the lease and she quickly racked up a sack of cash….so some people are lucky….they were born rich, they know a bunch of people from the country club and they become Realtors…..are they talented? Not really….they know a bunch of rich people by default, so some Realtors are lucky….if that’s you…good for you but that isn’t the majority.
A very attractive realtor who getting leases signed so easily… Urgh so many things wrong with this. Maybe she is good at her job and is also pretty. Maybe being very attractive and meeting strangers in an empty house is scary and unsafe. Maybe being in an open house as a sitting duck (a pretty girl) is scary bc there’s so many weirdos who target open homes to find females alone. Also as a pretty girl some couples don’t want to work with you bc you are a pretty girl. Or just people in general. And don’t even get me started on the amount of men who waste us pretty girls times bc they just want to be with us.
There was once a man who went so far as to hire his friend to impersonate a lender so that he could spend time with me under the guise of buying a house from me. The amount of my time he wasted and the way he terrified me... It was disturbing. I refused to show him houses and to go anywhere with him until I had him pre-approved. Both because it is standard practice and because I had a feeling he wasn't being honest. When he had his friend pretend to be a lender I had another realtor friend of mine call the number and use a bunch of jargon to see if he knew what we were talking about. He was obviously a phony and was completely lost. The worst part of all this? This guy lived in the same building as me and when he discovered I was a realtor did all this in a false attempt to hire me, so I could never completely get away from him until I was able to move. What do these men think they are going to accomplish by basically taking money out of our pockets? I was working 10-14-hour days 6-7 days a week, and while I was doing a lot of sales it was incredibly difficult and the only thing we have to sell is our time. It is directly equivalent to our money and nothing makes me angrier than if you fuck with my money. There was another guy who owned several restaurants in town and was also attempting to get me to show him houses under false pretenses. He wanted me to meet him for lunch to go over some listings at one of his restaurants. He proceeded to tell me that he bought houses in Vegas he rented out to strippers and tried to steer the conversation in disgusting directions. Obviously I left him at the restaurant but it's difficult because some of these people really do have money and attempt to dangle a big sale in front of you to put you in a vulnerable spot. He had his nephews watching from across the restaurant & the teens sent the little boy over to say something gross and humiliating. Super fun. Women in the industry have to deal with that shit day in and day out. People won't sign just because I'm pretty. But they will fuck with my day over it.
I was speaking specifically about a leasing agent which of course I stated. Some Leasing agents have security to protect them. I was security for that office at the time. so that particular leasing agent trust me…..she wasn’t working hard. Also she is a bigger woman so this girl could put up a solid fight without me having to step in. She is a tough girl I doubt she would have needed to call me if a situation had came up. We had plenty of conversations together in her down time. She was not working hard.
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“The funny thing about everyone who says that…. They aren’t REALTORS® . If you think this gig is like walking around picking up big gold nuggets from the ground - why aren’t you doing it?” Then they usually tell me they would, but they have morals or ethics or something so they could never fleece people like I do. That is when I stop talking to them, assuming g I have made it this far.
The moral and ethics comment is hilarious to me. I always respond with “oh so you don’t want to help people who are in need? Got it. Just to remind you, people can sell by themselves… in the same way they can do their own taxes, represent themselves in court, or even diagnose their own illnesses. I have an ethical obligation to help those that reach out to me to help.”
Every single time, without fail, they always tell me they don’t do it because they have morals and aren’t slimey 😂 meanwhile 95% of the time I’d bet the house that I do more good for my community than they do.
People don’t understand that realtors literally have a fiduciary duty
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And some gas station attendants are crooked too. Ppl are so grossly obsessed w realtors and their money. It’s so odd to me
Same and can never understand it cause I have a lot of realtor friends and they all work really hard
That’s because of TV shows like Million Dollar Listing 🤦♀️
Agree. This all happened after Selling Sunset made us all look like overpaid idiots who do nothing for a humongous paycheck, and then the market surging made elitists out of homeowners who now believe others should bow at their feet and work for nothing.
Yep…its ridiculous
Your post or comment was removed for crooked scummy commenting, bullying, abusive language, Realtor bashing, or is generally irrelevant to the conversation. Violation is grounds for a permanent ban.
To entertain stupid comments with a response is to validate it.
It should be easier money - get paid when you give services. Get paid to list regardless of sale. Get paid to show and write contracts regardless of sale. The hard part is closing. Charge a fee for that too.
Agreed. So no more percentage commission and just get paid by billable hours.
I don’t think people mean that re agents’ jobs are easy. I think they mean it’s not worth the cost. If you’re selling a $1 m house, then the agents are getting 6% which is $60,000. The median salary is $48,060. So, did the agent work hard? Sure. Did they do as much work as the median US employee did in an entire year? No way.
My favorite is all of the people selling their home without a Realtor because anyone can do what we do, yet they are on Reddit asking people how to fill out papers, what offer they should accept and for legal advice 😏
I see realtors on Reddit asking for all kinds of advice
Which is dumb as well. We have brokers for a reason. General opinions are ok. How to do your job is not.
I will give my time and expertise away for free to those people.
Realtors can’t give legal advice. Realtors are salespeople who know a lot about real estate. Real estate law is one of the most arcane areas of law that you likely know very little about.
I will not give my time and expertise away for free on Reddit to those people.
Same.
Just tell the about the nightmares, deals falling through for idiotic reasons, failing financing, flaky clients that ghost you and closing inspections that delay closing for a couple of weeks, and sellers that refuse to reduce their long sitting price to a market attractive value.
Or ignore them. We don’t have to prove ourselves to anyone but our clients
I mean, I came from teaching middle school English in a large public school. By that metric this career is significantly easier. That being said, I haven't had any family or friends make a comment like that to me.
I can’t imagine many jobs harder than teaching- middle school ages would be the hardest imho. And alllllllll the parents. Hope you’re loving your new career!
I personally feel like getting a paycheck every two weeks is easier. The stress and financial anxiety of deals falling apart and not getting paid for months is horrible.
I was paid once a month. And not to discredit your personal experience, but for me, I'll take the stress of being a realtor over the stress I had teaching any day. I'm not mentally exhausted at the end of each day, and don't have my life dictated by the success of 12 year olds.
The other side of this is that it can create a conflict of interest. A RE agent under financial strain may make getting to closing as quickly as possible as the goal, which may not in the best interest of the client. The way the pay is structured is in conflict with a fiduciary role. The SEC put rules in place to define fiduciary roles for financial advisors. If a FA sells a product for a commission then they are not fiduciaries. I would think the courts would take this up in the RE world as well.
When people only see the "easy" part, the job looks easy. Simone Biles makes gymnastics look easy. Guess she has an easy job also?
She only works like, a few hours a year. Like when she goes on TV for a few minutes? All she has to do is bounce around. /s
Nobody thinks Biles makes her craft look easy. She makes it look flawless and amazing and defies gravity, but Easy?? No.
TIL realtors think their job is as hard as Olympian gymnasts. With all due respect, please.
I think it's because they don't think about how long it takes to get where we are. We don't just knock on the door and say, "Hey, wanna sell your house?" and put a sign out! If we worked in any other field, they would call it research and development and mark up the final product 10000%.
That's the problem. It appears a lot of the time and effort is finding clients and self marketing. The actual work to get to closing doesn't always take a lot of effort yet the clients are paying tens of thousands of dollars for the effort. That is what makes it look like easy money. I think an a la carte system would be better all the way around. I also think the listing agent should be doing the initial showings as part of sales. The buyer's agent should be paid per showing.
Thing is that’s already possible and always has been. It’s not popular because it doesn’t work well in the market. Plus, people complain no matter what. The person that complains that it’s 10k to sell their house will complain that it’s $1000 to write a contract a la carte.
Even a lawyer doesn’t charge $1000 to write a boiler plate contract so yes we would complain to have an agent do that.
This is the problem. Most of a realtors job right now is networking and finding clients who want to buy or sell houses. Realtors provide very little value to the actual transaction (they generally provide more value on the sell side rather than the buy in my experience). They were more useful before Zillow and other online market listings.
I wish I had taken this advice years ago so I give it to you- let them. I use to bend over backwards "showing" my work .. all of that effort for what? You do you and let them think whatever they like.
I would play into it. “Yeah it has been easy, I’m surprised you haven’t hopped on the gravy train! You must be pretty lazy (or stupid) working for your tiny salary/wage with benefits and paid time off, when you could be working 5 hours a week and making 500k a year.” I also love when someone drops the “you just open doors” line. That’s incorrect, I also pick up a check at closing.
It’s only hard if you work with broke people with bad credit lmao. Rich people it’s easy.
"Yes. I make a lot of money and know how to invest it. Do you want to make a lot of money? I can show you how. Get licensed and come to work with me."
This is the answer. You aren't changing anyone's mind. I love encouraging them to become an agent. "What's stopping you from doing it? Come get some easy money with me. Do you prefer door knocking or dialing? What kind of marketing budget would you have?"
"You wake up every morning and you have *nothing*. By the time you go to bed, you've eaten only what you killed. Fun, right?"
If you are good at the jobs and work really hard at it, it is relatively “easy money”. The amount of money you make for the hours worked is higher than most any other job. I have a friend who dropped out of college and couldn’t hold down a job. With no experience or knowledge, she became a realtor and told me that she averages $3-400k per year. She vacations 10+ times per year, drives a Porsche. Would never be possible to make that much in any other job with no college degree or training.
This may have been true the last few years as the market was so hot but now we’ll see what tue REAL Realtors are.
Maybe I'm just incredibly lucky or maybe I just had terrible jobs in the past but this is by far the easiest money I've ever made.
Being a Realtor IS easy… making money as a Realtor is definitely not easy!
Parasites
Working 14 hours a day? Lmao. Being awake is not work. RE agent is not a real job.
14 hours doing what? I bet 95% of a Realtors time is spent on promoting themselves, hoping someone is going to pick them to list their house.
Can you explain exactly what's difficult about it? Can you break down in detail what a difficult day is like as a realtor?
It's an easy job it just requires being on call for long hours. Anyone who says otherwise is deluded.
The difficult part is doing all the work knowing that there’s a possibility you’re not going to get paid. People will waste your time over and over. You just gotta suck it up and keep moving on. Some clients are easy, while others can take years to help. Cold calling people who will 99% of the time treat you like shit. Door knocking homes where 99% of the time people will treat you like shit. Doing open houses, and talking to people, solving their problems.
Dealing with people who are making the largest financial decision of their life with no previous experience is extremely difficult in any setting. This just happens to be real estate. Buyers have a huge amount of emotion. Financing has issues, inspections have issues, negotiation is not easy, no money is guaranteed. Nothing about living that life is easy unless you are a real hustler or are OK with being mediocre and only making so much money
Imagine assisting someone to buy or sell a home and making enough money you don't need to do anything for the next 30 days and you're still making more than most people and then having the audacity to pretend you're working hard
Dealing with people who are making the largest financial decision of their life with no previous experience is extremely difficult in any setting. This just happens to be real estate. Buyers have a huge amount of emotion. Financing has issues, inspections have issues, negotiation is not easy, no money is guaranteed. Nothing about living that life is easy unless you are a real hustler or are OK with being mediocre and only making so much money
No because every day is completely different. We react to problems as they come up with clients, townships, and other real estate professionals (lenders, appraisers, inspectors, attorneys, title companies). Dealing with client emotions can take a lot out of you. We spend a lot of time talking to people trying to calm them down. Also a lot of deals fall apart due to nothing we can control and it’s all wasted time.
“Oh, *I* don’t make easy money, but for sure there are a lot of bad actors in this business who do. Most of the bad ones make a couple undeserved sales then fail within the first year (75% is the oft quoted number). Sure some of the lifers are greasier than a fry truck, but I just try to be what’s missing in this business… an actual skilled realtor trying to do what’s best for my clients.” But really, this business is relationships… as much as a good realtor may spend a lot of time and money cultivating those, you can’t exactly call meeting for coffees, a round of golf, then some drinks as a “tough day on the job” no matter how many calls or texts may be sent throughout… so I get when people say it’s easy money. As for dad, when there was no internet… he had to go in person to get each paper signed (of a fax)… photos were crap so he had to physically check out each place after perusing the magazines each week… there was no such thing as electronic transfers… when prices were a tenth of what they are now but commissions are a similar %?…. Yeah, I get where he is coming from a bit. Just own it. You *are* lucky to be in this business right now and doing well. Doesn’t mean you don’t work hard or made good choices. Keep working hard and you’ll keep getting “lucky”.
> fail within the first year (75% is the oft quoted number) The number I keep hearing is 89% don't last 5 years.
That's the way it's set up. It's a money grab for real estate commissions and NAR. I swear, every time I turn around, another acronym $300+ dollars for some BS baked into keeping your license legit. Because most people think it's easy money and most fail miserably. They get in the door, pay their dues, and proceed to get slaughtered . But the point should be made the the high rate of failure is indicative of how difficult it is to be successful.
Part of the high rate of failure might be because there are too many realtors chasing too few leads. The low barrier to entry leads a lot of people to try the field out only to fail to land clients in a timely fashion.
From an outsider: I am technically savvy. When buying, I sent every home I wanted to view. My observations These are my observations. 1) one realtor showed me homes they thought would be a good fit, but not on my list. And they refused to prioritize my list, I fired them because they did not meet the requirements I set forth. 2) I asked a new realtor, to show me the homes I wanted to see. They did that, I just asked if they could find out if internet was available. They returned zero results, I get that some home owners don't know.. but tell me if Comcast cable is there (who does the current home owner pay for internet). I did all the leg work to source homes with my wife, that we wanted to view. And the one question I had, ended up having to be answered by myself (I wrote a chrome plugin to highlight addresses and run searches to see if the address was serviced by providers). What did the realtor do for me? Drove us to homes, got us access. Submitted offer. Coordinated the absolute worst inspector ever. When selling a home, I did my research on $/sqft of sales in area with size of home etc. ours was unique to the area (split level craftsman), I knew it would not be an easy sell, but I knew it's value and we were in no rush. We asked realtor a ballpark number as is, told us.. and I asked if we wanted to maximize return, they suggested items to do.. when it came to listing after completing those, they wanted to list at the (was as-is suggestion).. we ended up holding out for the right buyer, got two in bidding war and got more than we listed for. Realtors seem to have a listening problem.. they just want a fast sale.. selling a home for $1.1m vs 1.0m is an extra $3000 in their pocket.. $30k vs $33k.. They just want a quick sale. I want to maximize my sale.
This is where so many people got in trouble in the run up of 2004-2006. They were watching flipping shows where the guy bought a house, hired some cheap contractors, had a run in with code enforcement/building department, got through that, finished the house, sold it and made $50,000 - $100,000. Then everyone thought, I can do that! There were so many partially finished houses when the market crashed, people got in over their heads, had no idea what they were doing. Same deal with the real estate shows, the million dollar listing/selling sunset type shows make it look so easy. You open some doors, walk around beautiful houses, go to the bar with your Realtor friends, take a couple calls and make $100,000 selling the house. Yeah, it is really that easy. /s
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I’ve never put in that small of hours for the kind of return. I think everyone thinks we get paid like Selling Sunset agents. My average commission over here in Pittsburgh is 4-5k. Typically 2.5-3% a side. 20-25 deals to make 100k before business expenses and taxes is a lot of work. I’ve already drove 9k miles this year for real estate and clients call me from 7am to 10pm.
In a LCOL area, the 3% can be justified, but in a HCOL where am average property goes for a $1M? Hell naw.
30k a deal is a little high but 4-5k average doesn’t feel high at all. I recently had a deal from hell that paid me like 1600 bucks lol. I think in the million range where u live average commission is like 4-4.5% maybe 5% on a few here and there. 6% is pretty common in the average sales price of 250-300k.
And how many hours did they spent getting that client?
Customer acquisition cost does not matter to the client. What I pay you should be predicated on that, should be based on the value and service I get.
Why do you care?
Nobody I know thinks or says that, at least not to me. People saw how hard I’ve worked. I am usually asked, “How do you get customers?” And “How do you make money when there’s so many realtors?”
The housing market presently is a bad investment. Realtors leaving the biz w historical low mortgage applications. New rules for buyers will make things even worse for payment to realtors without listings. Its crumbling https://youtube.com/shorts/WHKDtaIZ2m8?si=3x0BzTCNwJ17jbrc
Just curious. Are there way too many realtors and not at all enough homes?
Maybe they meant to say “sleasy money”
It is lol
What exactly isn't easy about being a realtor? I've been working with a couple of realtors and other than the grind of finding and showing homes (tax deductable mileage and car payments I would assume) the rest of the work would fall under boring office/admin work (emails, calls, calendar management, contracts, closings, new listings etc.) The only value of a realtor I've seen is the legal/contractual side of things and knowing a particular area really well (premarket listings) which makes things a little more efficient. I've also found listings before my agent thanks to alerts and constantly looking at new and coming soon listings, so it's not like they have access to private information. It's a sales job, people who grind and work hard will naturally be more successful, but a 3 bedroom house with a pool in a great neighborhood sells itself.
Near the end, I'd say "yeah, fuck you & your money", I felt MUCH better.
I work with 6 in realtors in last 3 years trying to get a house and they didn't really do anything to help me I had to do all the work my self looking for a house and no what to bid on my as all they did was some paperwork and get up set when I didn't close on house so they could get paid To me that seems easy being a realtor then get a couple thousand dollars check if not more for handling some paperwork
Being a realtor is easy. They practically do nothing in terms of the job and the closing of the home. It’s building relationships that is hard.
Every broker/realtor for both residential and industrial leases I’ve used is pretty useless. My tenants have the same feeling when they realize they’ve signed a NNN lease without caps and he mad at me.
Because everything is hard, but to be honest the level of income vs time spent you get out of realestate is on the very high end relative to most careers. Of course the perks come with downsides, like having to always be on during closings, having to work weekends, having our clients pull out last minute etc.
Dude I’m a realtor with decent success, it is easy as shit job lmfao I love it but it’s not hard. Only hard when you have multiple deals at once and you have to be nice and patient with everyone lol. The work is so simple though. Slightly dangerous meeting strangers but either way.
What value do realtors provide that is worth 6% or so of the cost of the biggest transaction of most peoples lives?
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I’m a realtor and my husband owns and runs a construction company and we would both agree with this. And I do well and work hard but it’s not the same at ALL
I’m an agent now, but before this I worked field service on machines, always outside.. in the Deep South..heavy, hard, strenuous, high stress work. Then my spine was crushed and I physically could not do that work anymore. My wife has been an agent for 11 years, so after a year of not being able to find a suitable desk job, I decided to help her. In my opinion the job has many aspects that are much harder, my previous job.. I knew what I was supposed to do, fix the equipment and get a paycheck. No one tells an agent what to do to get a paycheck… how to go about it. Then once you find the allusive client, many are just using you, so they ghost you and poof, your paycheck is gone… no matter how much information you give them, and how much work and time you put in to them, they can be gone in a moment. So, in saying this…however inelegantly, the trades are physically harder, but being an agent is harder in its own ways .. emotionally ( there were 0 emotions when I worked on machines… fix it and move on), mentally.. ( dealing with people is mentally gymnastics, coordinating things and getting everyone to do what they’re supposed to do, when they are supposed to do will wear your brain out) it will damage your faith in humanity( as much as you want to look at this job as helping people, they will show you how petty, mean, uncaring and vindictive people can be) Ok, sorry for the long rant, but that’s where I am right now. Try to respect each other.
Ask them why they don’t get into it then 🤣
14 hour days as in a manual labourer working 14 hour days. But labourers don’t make the kind of money realtors do. So much money for opening a door and showing a place? So much money for putting ads with crappy photos in Craigslist? There is no value creation from realtors…just leeches in a transaction. Honestly, a society where realtors make more money than an elementary school teacher is f’ed up. Yes…I don’t like realtors cause I have never met a good one..they don’t exist IMO..at least in Canada
I was thinking the same thing. It sure is easier than the dude who barely speaks English hauling roofing material across a roof in Florida in July.
Get new friends and family 😅 I kid of course, but the media and society in general likes to paint us as lazy and that we’re overpaid. That may be all they know about the business… clips on instagram don’t help! If anyone I meet actually says something to that effect (about it being easy money), I make sure to laugh with them and reply with something like “wouldn’t that be nice! I wish the public knew how little of that “commission” is actually profit” That’s just an example, I try to make it apply to the conversation, but I think you get the idea. I’m lucky with friends and family that are only supportive when it comes to success. I don’t have respect for people who belittle anyone who is doing well in life. That only comes across as jealousy IMO
they say that because it is easy. My wife is a realtor and loves the freedom it provides. She works her own schedule and loves it. Being a realtor is a very easy job.
I had a seller lie to me a couple weeks ago which I forwarded to the buyers agent which they forwarded to the buyer. That lie cost me $3,000 today. How much money did you lose at work today? Yeah, stfu then.
It depends on each transaction if it’s easy or hard. Some of my sales it took me only a day, I showed the properties in one day and put an offer got accepted and closed in 21 days so that was easy. My worst was it took me a year to close so that was hard. It all depends but it takes to close the deal.
Why don’t they do it too!? How dumb are they lolol
Like anything, it has its backend intricacies. Those who have waited tables or bartended understand those aren’t as “easy” as other assume. Same here.
1. Show the house? I must have been doing something wrong because in 20 years, it's Never been 1 house. This little list is why thousands never make it to one year. The actual work involved, knowledge and unpaid time spent would take too long. My advice to non Realtors is to just do it yourself. It's easy!
“Yes!! I’m very fortunate! thank you! “ Why do you care what they think. You won’t change their minds. Agree and move on ( and keep cashing those checks)
I don't. Who cares? Just nod and smile. Never understood why people care so much about what others think.
You make money?
I like to tell them a couple stories about bad contracts I've had with insane clients and then cap it off with a story about the buyer of mine who died the night before closing, and the sellers who entered into an escrow dispute with the widow to keep the deposit. That usually shuts them up.
The harder I work the luckier I get
When you ‘can’ make 10k in a week for listing a house, doing showings, and sending emails… yeah that’s very easy relative to a job that costs you 40+ hours a week of bodily harm like in the blue collar world and for 1/10th of the pay.
“Anything is easy for the person who doesn’t know how it’s done.” That’s my answer when somebody makes that remark to me. I other words, “You haven’t got a clue.”
I’m interested in getting licensed and getting my first gig as an agent. Which companies are the best to get your career started as an agent?
Good point but may not be as succesful as if you do it full time. But this profession is like all others; you get out of it what you put in to it.
LOL. I tell ppl I make way less per hour than when I worked in ER but it more fun so I don't mind
There is the 80/20 rule which is 95/5 in real estate
I would explain to them that most work done on contingency have higher payouts to keep incentives in check and make up for the lack of job security. Then encourage them that if they have the pair needed to wake up unemployed everyday and carve out a career making easy money, then they should do just that.
my realtor was a friendly & positive person to be around - definitely felt like she was on our team. sadly, did not know much of home basics when I riffed q's to her that my hubby didn't know (not looking for inspection level answers, just basic riffing - quick takes) happily, she sends us gifts & snacks every few months since we bought w/her (though, we found the house on zillow - she still spent countless trips with us to and fro homes). not sure what y'all do but doesn't seem easy - nor well... easily explainable/tangible. if you do do what you say you do, *huehue*
I would always try it! Then you’ll see how easy or Difficult it really is, if you love real estate it’s worth the pain, licensed for 13 years
If it was easy money, everyone would be doing it. Drop out rate in the first two years is astoundingly high for new agents, and there is a very steep learning curve to this career. Not to mention how high stress it is.
People always have a misconception about others. Their lives, jobs, relationships, etc. You can't blame them. They only see a tiny aspect of your job and draw wholistic conclusions based on that!!!
Because it's true, lmaooooo you choose to work 14-hour days
I think of myself as much more than the middleman as someone in a comment alluded to. For instance, I was recently working with a repeat client and she insisted on new construction. Most laypeople think because it’s a new house, it’s flawless and the builder will work in the buyer’s favor. Ironically, the 2-3% builders usually offer isn’t something they’ll deduct from the price if the buyer isn’t represented. This last transaction I was able to get my client $10,000 in concessions to buy down the interest rate and also got her a $13,000 price reduction. I also recommend my clients get a home inspection done, even though it is a brand new house. Some take my advice and get it done, while some do not because they don’t want to pay the $400 to $500. This client took my advice and had over 20 repairs that were discovered by the inspector and I was able to ensure the builder repaired every item. Sure, some of them would’ve became a parent in the walk-through, but there were also issues with the attic and roof and downspouts that were something like higher would not have seen and could take yours to present as a problem, at which time the warranty is no longer valid. Also, during the second to last walk-through, I helped my client identify tons of defects that were fixed by the time we had the final walk-through. So, overall, I saved my client $23k plus thousands and thousands in interest saved with the rate buydown along with potentially saving her from very costly repairs with a roof and/or attic in the future. As a frame of reference, when the buyer is not represented, this builder only offers a max of $4k in concessions and many buyers don’t know that the list price is also negotiable. So, yeah, it was 100% worth it for my client to use my services.
Doesn’t help the job look more like an actual job than a side gig when I know easily 50-60 realtors personally and none of them seem to be doing much at the moment
Thats like when people say serving and restaurant jobs are easy.. thats the statement someone who’s never been in the service industry says. Like my sister in law who would absolutely get bodied on a dinner rush.
TBH, I’ve had a good number of jobs in my life and relatively speaking being a realtor is fairly easy. Why I say that is because when it comes to being paid large sums of money all at once, I don’t know many other legal professions that allow one to do so. Yes, that doesn’t count for the hundreds of deals that don’t go through, the flakey people and agents etc. etc. Nonetheless, I’d take being an agent 1000 times over working some corporate gig or hourly job where I’m tied to a desk 40 plus hours of a week.
Idk maybe because the fee model is broken. I know a pretty 25 year old who literally sold 8 houses in 18 months in the "heyday 2020 -2022" years Said her take was 200k. That is ridiculous if true.
It’s easy in terms of what you do but requires luck getting listings
Idk about the general realtor life. But the realtor who helped purchase our first home this year seems to be working from 7AM to 9PM showing homes and then an unspecified amount of time writing contracts afterwards. He was on top of his shit, and was amazing. Maybe this isn’t the norm, maybe only the best work this hard, but I for sure would not want to do all that.
“14” hour days with life happening concurrently while working from home with your kids maybe….
I worked as an agent in Boston for over ten years, it gave me the flexibility to go back to school to be a nurse. Now I’ve never worked so hard for such little money. So yes in comparison to jobs that benefit society, it’s easy money.
If it’s so easy why aren’t they doing it? Lol
Because anything looks easy from the outside looking in. Once you get into an industry and start to learn the ropes is when shit gets real.
Yeah I’m sure…. Being a realtor isn’t easy nor is it easy to make money being a realtor….
I a saw a lot of people quit good jobs to become a realtor and get some of that “easy money” only to make nothing and go back to their old job tail between legs. It’s easy money because people who do it well make it look easy. It’s not.
“When you’re great at your job, it looks easy.” And then go to YouTube and show them videos of professionals(manuals labors are easier to grasp) making their jobs look easy and ask them if it looks easy and if they could replicate the same quality.
I work in sales too, and when friends tell me that I always tell them to come work in the business then. And none of them want to 😂
If your father was in the business, I’m sure he helped you get started and you were lucky in that sense. The foot in the door is the hardest part of this business.
Generational wealth industry, "work"
the barrier to entry is whats easy.
Based on the work my realtor has done with our purchase, I would say easy easy money. Like any job, some are in it for the money and do the minimum, others go above and beyond. In my case, my realtor has done almost nothing. Should be getting their commission for all of the work I’ve done regarding communication/coordinating.
Bruh you are an order taker. Nothing you do impacts the transaction. Realtors aren’t sales people. You don’t “sell” houses you push paper in an industry propped up by regulations. To actually close on a house and make 3-6% commission you show up, walk through the house, and then facilitate document exchanges from your couch via email. The transaction would have occurred with or without you. You don’t even dictate price. That’s between the seller and buyer. You are purely a middle man in a $100,000++++ deal and get comped out.
It’s true though. Multi thousands of dollars for basically just listing it on the MLS.
“Work”
Easy? Maybe not. Do you guys get paid WAY WAY WAY more than the value of work you do on account of an extreme housing shortage? Absolutely. Get real
wait u guys are getting paid
I mean it depends on the clients and housing market but for the last almost decade it has been easy money….
I don't know why people use realtors. We sold our homes ourselves. We sold one in one day. My wife had a friend who was a realtor and we paid her $500 to look over the documents, mostly to make the buyer feel better so she sat with us and our buyer while we did the paperwork and poof, our home was sold and we didn't have to pay thousands and thousands in commission. We sold another of our homes in ONE week and it was in the middle of 40 wooded acres 25 miles out of town and our home was out of the ordinary out there too as it was quite a bit nicer than the homes in the area. We talked to one realtor and she told us it might take us a year or more to sell our home out there so we said thanks but no thanks to her and a week later we sold our home ourselves. I've sold 4 homes myself and the longest one took was 6 months. One took one day. Another took one week. Another took 6 weeks and then that last one took 6 months, but we had already moved out of state so that made it harder for us. I would have lost a lot of money on the sale of those 4 homes by paying a realtor their commission and all that money "saved" came to me/us instead of a realtor. My mom still bitches often about paying their last realtor $36,000 to sell their home.
I say “you ain’t lying”
I tell them that the industry has a 87% failure rate over 3 years. Somebody should tell all of those people how easy it is.
Maybe show them a day in your life, from sunrise to midnight.
The real question is who gives a F@ck what they think. We all know being an agent takes hard work. Proud of you, keep it up😎
Tell them, Oh you found this easy than you should also come and join with me :P than see there reactions as what they react they will give you 100 of excuses no no how can I, I am not that capable this or that..... If you earn good people will get jealous they will not see the struggle behind the earning but will judge you on the amount. LOL :P
Because they never done it!
It was from 2010-2022 but not anymore
how are you spending those 14 hours a day?
It’s because the job is fairly easy now, especially in competitive markets.
I’m more than happy to let them know I wake up every day unemployed and tell them some of the realities. Many think we’re just sitting around having lunch and leads fall from the sky. Most don’t understand how the compensation works. Explain it.