As a physical estate agent 'must' you 'rent' your organization out from the company that hires you?
I heard within order to work for a existing estate company you have to rent your organization space. Is this true?Answers: Depends on the Broker/owner and what the policy is. Some you do pay a "desk fee", some pilfer a percentage of your gross either in the past or after franchise fees. In my area, most department policies are set up so they get almost 20k a year from each agent to cover company costs (this includes company hype, phone, heat, lights, marine, rents, etc). Other areas may be figured on a better or lower per agent average. Think about it - you would own to pay for adjectives these things on your own, and it really is cheaper to "pay" the broker for the basics!
As jest said, some charge a desk duty. My brokerage doesn't, but the RE/Max in town does, it is $240 a month, plus beside the same commission split I own with no desk duty.
Some brokerages are charging monthly website fees, marketing fees, they are creative ways to phrase the same piece - so pay to work in attendance.
Bear in mind that respectively office will operate differently, what you reward for and how compensation works can vary greatly. Make sure you enjoy a clear picture of who is paying for what.
As a real estate agent what hours do you keep and can you work from home?
Answers: As a Realtor, I work about 40 -50 hours per week, and rotate day hours with evening/weekend hours to accomodate my clients. I do a lot of my work from home (as I can do email and phone calls from my living room after the kids are off to school).
I have not missed a single school outing, play, sporting event or sick day with my kids since becoming a Realtor. But the flip side is that if you do not discipline yourself to put in the hours, you do not get paid.
If you are interested in becoming a Realtor, interview Broker/managers at several of your local offices until you find one that feels good to you - some have more structure, some have less, and personalities are greatly different in each office. Good luck!
You need to be working under a broker, unless you're a broker. They do expect you to show up once in a while, plus "phone duty" is one of the ways you get customers. You would be the one to answer the phone for some amount of time, on some kind of schedule, and any new buyers or sellers who call during that time (not asking for someone specific) are yours. There are lots of things you can do from home.
As for hours...you have to be pretty flexible if you really want to do this. People will be calling you all hours of the day and night, expect you to walk out on the kid's school play or Sunday dinner at your mother's, to show them a house they're not going to buy. You're plans will be dumped at the last minute, and your spouse will be annoyed. But if you're willing to put your whole self into it, you can make a ton of dough. I didn't. I hated it every minute. Sitting in a empty house waiting for strangers to look at it. Having sellers yell at you for thinking their house isn't worth what they think. Someone always thinking you're trying to cheat them.
Here's what I suggest: Call a local real estate office and tell the manager you're thinking about becoming an agent. Ask if you could talk to him or her, and maybe shadow an agent for a day or so. It may not be what you expect.
Hi I'm an agent. There are basically 3 types of real estate agents.
1. Listing agents
They work with owners of homes and represent sellers
2. Selling agents
They work with buyers and meet them at properties and show houses
3. The hybrid agent that does both listing, selling.
You can work from home about 90% of the time if you are a selling agent as you can even have folks meet you at the properties and have them follow you in their car from house to house but other than that you can be at home.
A listing agent however you can't be at home UNLESS you are willing to spend money mailing. You can get postcards made and mail them to a certain neighborhood about 2 times a month. Make sure the area is limited to about 3000 homes no more no less. Mail them monthly.
To mail 100 homes with postcards it costs 26 cents a stamp so every 100 cars you mail out costs $26.
So to mail your entire farm area 1 time per month it would costs about $780.00 a month. One transaction should net you over $2500-$3000 or more based on a $250,000 house so its worth it.
You can cut down the mailing expense if you also combine it with handing out flyers door to door or you can hire someone very cheap and have them hand out flyers 2 times a month in your farm area and that would be less than half the cost of mailing.
Tip: If you are a listing agent you have more control of your time but make sure you scope out a neighborhood that has HIGH TURNOVER that is people are always moving out and moving in so you can earn more.
Some areas are very settled so if nobody is moving its gonna be slim pickings to get paid more often.
I used to work one of the hottest areas in Los Angeles county it was a condominion tract and I could knock out 500 homes in one day easy as they were all close together. Every single month 2 or 3 of them would go up for sale with me, it was awesome made a lot of money but I moved but it was a blast.
You can contact a TITLE INSURANCE company and ask them to send you what is called a FARM KIT software and its free but they are neat you can run your farm on your computer it has custom letters etc..
As an International Property Broker I work from home using Skype and the Internet, there is much more money in the International scene anyway. I love beach homes after people buy the home sell them a yacht - simple! This way the commissions just flow like the juices from a roast leg of lamb straight from the oven to under the carving knife.
Believe me sell a boat and villa and you can make the same commission as selling hundreds of little condo units, less deals more money. The biggest money is now in the tax havens especially if they are topical - all the big spenders want a piece of that action
As a real estate agent what percentage do you typically earn from the sale of a home?
Answers: It depends. Standard real estate commission is 6%. If both the buyer and seller have different realtors, the commission is split between the 2. I've seen it go as low as 4%, with 2% for each realtor.
Meh - disregard the uninformed answers above.
On a 100,00.00 transaction, the agents BROKER is paid their portion of the commission. Since the traditional fee is 6%,we'll use that number.
OK, 6% of 100k is 6,000.
of that 6,000 50% goes to each side (assuming you're only on one side of the transaction)
so 3,000 - right? - WRONG
Most agents don't get 100% of the commission generated, you're looking at losing between another 10 - 50%
OK, so 1,500 - no worries - that's not so bad right?
Then there's the whole mentoring fee some brokerages charge, and the E&O Insurance so now you're below a grand.
OH! then there's the government - they're going to want about 40% of the amount your original check was for, so lessee, that's a thousand dollars minus the 400 for taxes and you're looking at taking home a whopping 600.00 per hundred thousand dollars sold.
That's not taking into account the money they had to spend on the original classes it takes to get licensed, MCE, gas used driving clients around, marketing a house, MLS dues and any other startup fees.
Still think realtors are overpaid?
I sell homes in the Bahamas, there is no tax taken from me, there are some new developments that are easy to sell and commissions are a full 3%. It is not the percentage that is important it is
1) How easy is it to sell a unit?
2) How much is a unit?
Some properties are a nightmare to sell others are hard not to sell. If you work for a company with lousy properties then you cannot sell because you do not have what the buyer wants. I will give you one example and one only to see if you understand. You have a billionaire client and he wants something nice, a villa perhaps, next to a casino, with a private gated marina, and next to a luxury 5 star resort, and an international airport, and tranquility - sound like a tall order, yes it is - here the problem might not be "do you have the client?' but rather "Do you have the property?" and if you did know of such a property could you get to the source?
And then if you did have just what he wanted then you would be taking home a serious fat wad of cash - there are many elitest property developments where good sales can earn their house in a year! You think I am kidding huh? I shall reveal just one website that has such offers (such websites help me put caviar on the breakfast table)
TheWaterFrontLife dot com :) you see selling stuff like this to Americans is easier than selling US real estate at extortionate prices and then have property taxes on top, this tax haven is just a short hop from Miami!