It is pretty cool to make a living part-time I hear, but its not reality. A part-time Real Estate career is attractive and seems like a great concept on paper. I mean being able to have all the flexibility in the world and family time, because it’s most important, plus the chance to make lots of money answering your phone can’t be beat. But its a joke and should be stopped now! I completely understand working two jobs and slowly working your way into a Real Estate career, but the concept that you are so good at Real Estate sales that you don’t have to really apply yourself and your friends owe you a sale is embarrassing. I will use my attorney for instance. My attorney is an attorney at 8 am and 5 pm every week day and over the weekend and off hours as needed. He is studying and working to know everything he can with the chance that a client will call or answer needing his expertise. He spends down time meeting people that will recognize his skill set and tempt them to use his services. He works tirelessly to see business trends and offers a heads up to incoming problems. What he is not is throwing away any non scheduled day at the park or watching tv or looking for excuses to not find more work. He is working and He is maintaining a status with his clients, including myself, that he will know what I need when I call. Many Realtors assume that there is no “work” to be done and that may explain the overwhelming failure rate in Real Estate.
The rumor in the past of a 10% success rate can’t be because Realtors made the decision to work a little extra or spent some down time learning to be better then the next Realtor. The failure rate is largely to blame for lack of professional business structure. When you really look at the small percentage of Realtors that do the majority of the transactions in your community, they are not taking random time off and waiting for the next deal to show up. These awesome Realtors prospect continuously and know where to see and be seen. They use social media consistently to send the message they want to get across to their target audience. They even have a target audience. They work the business hours that their audience needs them and then available in off-hours as needed. These strengths are not new to business but they are normal to successful ones. After what we went through in our business a few years back cleared out so many of the uncommitted and career ammeters, but it also set up a come back that turned newcomers into quick hits and formed some bad habits. 2013 was a great year for Real Estate but in no way was it a year the builds a career. It was a year that could have launched so many and hopefully did but even after all we have learned from the last 5 years we still see a part-time Real Estate career as an option and are surprised in November when the phone stops ringing. Working with a home owner or buyer today requires an expert knowledge of the transaction and how to get to a closing table and I can only hope that we will begin to move towards a profession that demands that standard and a clientele that rewards it.
-curt