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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Think4Yourself who wrote (77952)	5/21/2007 6:30:05 PM
From: Tradelite	Respond to of 306849

No, you don't HAVE to have a college education to become a Realtor. But you do have to be a rather educated person to deal face-to-face and converse intelligently with customers and clients who in most areas of the country are probably going to be lawyers, doctors, college professors, computer engineers, etc. You also have to impress the principal broker who interviews you with your qualifications, in order to get your license activated and actually work in the business. Brokers don't tend to fill up their supply of available desks with people who can't talk the talk and walk the walk of the office's general clientele. This is why you don't see many recent college grads entering real estate sales--they often need some previous, solid workplace experience under their belts before they can compete against the long-timers in real estate and inspire confidence in customers and clients. As for writing off auto and other expenses......if you've ever been self-employed and had to make quarterly self-employment tax payments to the IRS, you'd see how little is left, no matter how many "write-offs" you can take. A rule of thumb for success in the biz states that agents should allocate approximately 10 percent of their income on personal marketing alone; this doesn't count the ad expenses for individual properties which might be listed for one day or one year. And yes, it might only take 40 hours of work to complete a transaction, or it might take 40 weeks. The short and easy ones have to compensate for the others that don't work out so well. A high volume of transactions is the only way to make money in real estate. Many agents these days maintain that high volume by employing assistants to help serve clients, so right there they face another debit against their income. Success has its price, and it's not wrong to assume that many people only work that hard in that business because they actually enjoy it. It's not for everyone.