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So You Want To Be A Real Estate Agent?
from IdaHome Issue 6
SO YOU WANT TO BE A REAL ESTATE AGENT?
“There’s always room for one more really good real estate agent”
BY ZACH KYLE
While talking about the redhot housing market, several friends commented to me that real estate agents must be making a killing. Prices are up, while the job is basically the same. Homes practically sell themselves. How hard could it be?
My answer: very, very hard,
in part because there’s already upwards of 6,000 licensed and active agents and brokers in the Treasure Valley. Another 70 graduate each month from Idaho Real Estate School alone, the largest of several schools in the Treasure Valley. About 15,000 listed homes were sold in Ada and Canyon counties last year. Not everybody is getting rich.
I talked with Mike Gamblin, owner of Mike Gamblin Real Estate and a teacher at Idaho Real Estate School, about the challenges and opportunities facing new agents. I left the conversation thinking plenty of his students will be successful. After all, as Gamblin pointed out, plenty of agents started during the depths of the recession and are still going strong. But it’s going to be tough.
First, some good news.
Earning the license itself seems doable. Prospective agents must take and pass a total of 90 hours of classes through one of a handful of local schools, all teaching the same state-approved curriculum about the technical and legal aspects of the job. Students who take the courses seriously, have high school degrees and can pass background checks ought to score the 70 percent required on the state test to earn their license.
The next step —ginning up business, without a backlog of referrals or repeat customers, in a crowded market —strikes me as much harder.
Gamblin tells his students they’ll have to hustle to make it.
When that phone rings, good agents drop everything and answer.
“Successful agents work many be erratic. nights and weekends,” he said. “They have to be available when time or their clients are available, which is usually outside of normal working hours. It’s just a lot of hard work.”
The first two or three years are the hardest, Gamblin said. Real estate is a networking business, and it takes time to build up referrals and, when you get to a sweet spot, start getting repeat customers.
That doesn’t happen overnight, and agents’ paychecks be erratic. “A lot of people have a hard adjusting from a salary or wage to 100 percent sales commission" he said. That’s a shock to any family’s budget.”
Real estate advertising relied on expensive print ads when Gamblin started 29 years ago.
While there are still advantages to spending big on marketing and advertising, Gamblin said the internet and social media offer inexpensive ways for new agents to drum up business. To his point, I’ve interviewed relatively new agents who have thousands of followers on Facebook and/or Instagram. That’s free engagement.
As such, new agents don’t need a war chest for marketing, Gamblin said. But it’s critical that they have a marketing plan, which is a big step since most lack a sales or marketing background.
“They keep successful marketing efforts and weed out things that don’t work.”
If I just got my real estate license, I’d try to catch on with an established agent and soak up all of the knowledge, training and mastery of lead generation I could. There is also tons of training available for agents working under bigname banners. For example, I’ve talked to Keller Williams Realty agents who swore by the company’s system for understanding and better serving different customer personality types.
But I’d also think hard before pursuing that license in the first place. I’ve interviewed some of the top agents in the valley. One told me, off the record, that they were waiting for a recession to chase off half of the competition while they relied on referrals and repeat customers – fruits of more than a decade spent building their network.
