10 Things I wish I Knew Before Becoming a Real Estate Agent

being a new realtor is hard i thought i knew what to expect when i first started out turns out there's so much more than you may think stay tuned because in today's video i'm going to share with you everything i wish i would have known before becoming a realtor [Music] hey y'all and welcome back to my channel my name is myra from our nashville realtor and today i'm going to be sharing with you everything i wish i would have known before becoming a realtor so when i first started i thought i knew pretty much everything a good idea i guess you could say of what to expect um because before getting licensed i did all my research and i thought that you know i kind of had a good idea but actually after i joined my brokerage and i started learning everything i realized i was kind of way in over my head and did not expect most of the stuff that i was learning there's a lot of things that i actually was not expecting when i first started off and i was able to make a list of 10 things so that is 10 additional things that i learned after all the just basic research knowledge that i thought i had to begin with i thought one of the hardest parts was going to be the licensing exam i kind of had it in my head that if i get past this exam i can get through this i can pass then it's kind of smooth sailing turns out that is completely wrong the hard work really begins after you pass your exam you put so much work so much effort into studying and preparing for this exam and i thought that was going to be my main hurdle to get over i was like if i can just pass it we're going to be good but turns out that's almost one of the easy parts and i'm not trying to say it's like easy to pass the exam but it's definitely one of the easier parts because once you're on with a brokerage that's when the real work begins so for me the part that is probably the hardest is your ramp up so that would come after you've done your onboarding you are with your brokerage now and they pretty much just set you off you know you're on your own you're free to go off and find your clients and figure out how to run your business um that is definitely a huge overwhelming job in itself a lot of brokerages offer training and sometimes they even will hold your hand a little bit for the most part but overall you are on your own you are essentially your own business so the ramp up in everything you need to learn all the systems you have to learn trying to find your clients trying to figure out a system that works for you is probably the hardest part in my opinion the second thing that i wish i would have known before becoming a realtor are the expenses so everybody tells you when you first start off it's going to be expensive and you need to make sure you have x amount of money set aside because it's going to be a while before you have your first closing i factored in that i was probably going to need about 1000 or so um and that would cover all the expenses of paying for the exam paying for my license paying for like whatever startup fees that i had with my brokerage and probably a little bit of marketing it's it's way more it's way more let me just tell you that it was a sticker shock to me on how much it actually cost to um really be a realtor and my husband got licensed at the same time as me so we were paying double so it was double everything which is kind of crazy especially when you're not making an income from it at the beginning i'm gonna make a separate video going more in depth about all the costs that are associated with becoming a realtor um so stay tuned for that one that should be coming soon but i'll just go over a little bit today on kind of a baseline of the cost that you can expect so like i said earlier there's going to be your exam cost there's a fee to take the exam there is also a fee to get your license once you pass your exam there could be brokerage fees depending on what broker you go with and there's also training fees at some brokerages that offer training and then there's also association fees with different um realtors association which is one that i did not really know about these costs can really start to add up and it can be really overwhelming the good news is that in most cases you make one deal and it should cover all of these expenses next up would be the expectations so everybody tells you that you need about two three maybe four months till you close on your first deal that really depends on you though that's not the general so you go into it you're spending all this money and you are essentially not going to get a paycheck for at least an average of three months if not longer that really depends on how much you're working and how hard you are hustling it can be really difficult when you are trying to do two careers at the same time that's a lot of people in most cases because when you first start down the real estate path you are not getting a paycheck so you need a way to continue to live life and you know have a roof over your head so if you don't have a spouse who is working or you don't have a lot of money saved up you're going to be working and you're going to be putting in probably at least part-time work if not full-time at one company while you're trying to essentially moonlight this real estate business when you're doing that it's going to take you longer because you're not having the amount of time that someone who can dedicate 40 plus hours a week to real estate would another expectation would be that if you are staying at home with children so in those cases usually you can only put in about part-time work it's a little hard to put in full-time work in those cases unless you have older children so that is something that would kind of make your ramp up go a little bit slower too because you are unable to put in the amount of hours that it would take to probably um cash in on a paycheck in the near future all right so moving on to the fourth thing that i wish i would have known before becoming a realtor and that is you are completely on your own and i knew this going into it but it's one thing to know it and another thing to actually like be in it so when i first started i was able to take a month-long training course which was really valuable and i really appreciated everything that i was able to learn from that but after the month was up i was completely set off on my own and that's when it really hit me it was very daunting to realize like okay this is now all on me to make this happen nobody's watching over me no one's holding my hand no one's like holding me accountable so you are completely on your own so in that sense if you're not the hustling type it's gonna be a lot harder to make it happen if you know what i mean if you haven't watched any of my previous videos we actually moved to nashville during a pandemic so we knew nobody and it was really hard to i guess kind of build that network during covid when you're in a situation where everybody is like staying at home and there's like lockdown orders and people just are not really gathering or having like social networking events or anything like that it is a lot harder to meet those people and to connect and just kind of get to know all the new people around you that made building relationships really tough and kind of put a big halt on my networking so if you are starting off that's something to keep in mind you really need a network doesn't matter the situation with like what is going on you need to figure out how to network how to meet people and how to make those connections and form those relationships because that is what is going to get you business so another thing that i wish i would have known um when you first start off getting clients is really only part of the job i always thought clients were like the biggest thing that's what you work on that's what you focus on but in the beginning it's like a very small amount maybe going forward it becomes a lot bigger but in the beginning you're learning so much that it feels like that is only a small portion of what you're supposed to be doing when you first start off you are so busy with figuring out what your strategy is working on graphic design your marketing and learning what you can and can't do how you do this how you do that um learning all the systems it's just it's a lot so that is something that i was not really fully prepared for i thought you know you just get your license get in and then you start trying to find clients but there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff too so speaking of clients that is going to be the next one that we're going to talk about getting clients is key to this job especially sellers so when i first started i thought that i would be focusing a little bit more on the buyers because i thought it would be a little bit easier to get a buyer as a new agent than to have some seller want to trust me to sell their home i felt like it would probably be easier the other way turns out at least in this market in middle tennessee right now it is so hard to be a buyer's agent because there is very little inventory i am constantly seeing and hearing from other agents how difficult it is to be a buyer's agent right now because the market is crazy it is a very hot sellers market right now houses are being listed and getting offers within hours and some are getting multiple hours i have heard upwards of 30 offers on a single property so if you're a buyer can you imagine how stressful that is to be competing with like 29 other people for one property it's crazy the inventory is just so low there's a lot of new housing going up around here but those are you know you have lead times on that so for someone who needs to get into something very soon inventory is super low so being a buyer's agent is a lot harder than i actually thought it was going to be is that true in every market probably not but i only know what's in my market right now so look in your market and see what's going on is it a buyer's market is it a seller's market and based off of whichever one that is try to put your focus on that one at my brokerage we focused on trying to get the seller which was something that was a little shocking to me while i love my buyers and i will always work with buyers there is a little bit of a benefit to working with sellers meaning there is less disruption in your day once you meet with your seller you get their house listed then you are able to just market that house from your own home how you feel you should you can host an open house you can you know put out whatever kind of advertising that you want but when you're a buyer's agent you're going to be spending your weekends driving around showing houses that people may or may not buy or putting in multiple offers on multiple houses that may not even get accepted um like i said in today's market you are competing with so many other people that i mean you're lucky when you get an offer accepted that's one of the biggest surprises that i found out with keller williams is that while we do both buyers and sellers they really do um like the sellers so another thing that i wish i would have known is how overwhelming it can be so when you first start off there's so much to learn there's so many systems it just becomes very overwhelming you're learning how do contracts work how do i write this contract correctly because it's a contract and i can't mess this up you're also learning mls how do you use this how do you search on it how do you find exactly what you need to find you're learning how do i cold call people how do i reach out to people that i don't know where do i get the numbers from you're learning how to write an offer how to get business cards how to get your first clients you're setting up headshots you're trying to get your marketing material there's just so much to learn as a new agent there's so much to do and it feels at times like you were just trying to keep your head up of water keller likes to um call it drinking from a fire hose and that is exactly what it feels like another thing that i wish i would have known at least to be aware of is the comparison game the comparison game will steal your joy so for me i took a um i took a what's it called a um training course at the beginning and it was a bunch of peers of mine who are in the same kind of you know stage that i'm in some people started like a month or two before me i was one of the newer ones but they're all kind of in the same space it's really hard to not compare yourself to your peers see where they're going who's getting more leads like who's closing on their deal first and not trying to be competitive with it you are like your own competition not anybody else and that's something that i never really thought that i would be kind of focusing on or i would have cared about but it is hard to see like if you're putting in a lot of hard work and then there's someone next to you who's like closing on their second deal already and you're like how did you do that so there's always going to be the beginners who seem to have all the luck there's always that person or they even have the advantage of just having a very wide robust network and they seem to be the person that knows everybody and um all those people are just constantly throwing them leads for me like i said i was new to the area when i started so i didn't have a network so i was spending my time trying to build my network instead of um having a network there that could just kind of throw me a bone in a sense so when other people in your brokerage or circle are getting leads and it seems to be like they're succeeding it can be really demotivating to um see that and like feel like you're not being as successful as you should be so what i learned very quickly is you're on your own timeline and you need to stay in your lane and focus on you because if i'm putting in 100 and doing the best that i can then i'm succeeding and it's not the other way around of comparing myself to someone else and not succeeding it's about me and my game and what i'm doing all right and the final thing that we're gonna cover today is training so like i said my brokerage offered multiple different training options for me they had the one month long training course and they also offer um throughout the week like a training course here here and there on just different things like docusign or writing contracts or something like that that we can take that's one thing that's on your own time that's if you want to do it and i appreciate that being there if you want it because it's a really nice resource to have but what i didn't know is when you join with a brokerage you also have to join with your local realtor association for me we had three options of which one we could join one of the options had a three day these are full days eight hours mandatory orientation so you can imagine if a you're working a job or a b you are even just trying to work on your own real estate business it can be a lot to take that's 24 hours out of your work day in order to do this mandatory training i kind of shocked it around and was able to find a training that only took me i think it was like five maybe six hours uh which is a lot better than the other one which was three full days that is something to keep in mind that one was kind of a shocker to me because i didn't even know that there was going to be another mandatory training that i had to attend um but you have to do that in order to be in good standing in order to be able to sell that in mind if you have a full-time job that you're working or you have children that you need to take care of it's definitely time consuming all right so that's going to be it for today's video if you liked this video please give it a thumbs up that will help other realtors or aspiring realtors find this information if you have any real estate related questions or you're ever looking to buy or sell in the middle tennessee area please feel free to reach out to me i'll leave my information down below that's gonna be it for today i will see you guys in my next video bye

Channel: Myra Creely

Views: 94,048

Keywords: things i wish i knew before becoming a real estate agent, nashville real estate, nashville homes, nashville realtor, tennessee realtor, new real estate agent, new realtor first year, first year as a new realtor, first year as a new real estate agent, becoming a new realtor, how to become a new realtor, how to get listings as a new agent, how to get started as a new realtor, real estate agent tips, things to know as a new realtor, becoming a realtor, should I become a realtor

Id: _R3uuzEthco

Length: 18min 14sec (1094 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021