These days, good luck finding a home without an agent by your side.Â
The moment you visit Zillow, there will be 10 sneaking into your DMs within the next minute pestering you until you answer their questionnaire.
Thereâs no getting around the home buying process anymore in the dark.
In the past a.k.a pre-covid, for fun I used to glance around Redfin for deals and check out dream properties for fun.
I couldnât be the only one and now I avoid it entirely!
Real estate agents might not be reliant, trustworthy or know their facts as much as they make it seem.
Yet they do know how to put on a show and find hidden deals off the market which we all obviously want in this overheated market.
If we had the choice not to work with a real state agent, most of us would probably choose not to. It doesnât compare to working with a portfolio manager within our investments. In most cases, we NEED them to stay sane and realistic.
Donât get me wrong, real estate agents are terrific, talented, hard-working diligent incredible people. In fact, even a few of my colleagues at NYU just got their real estate license.
Majority of realtors even skipped college all together and didnât have to get into student loan debt, tests or drama. Not a bad financial decision for a 20 yr old but hard to maintain and stabilize. Although novice realtors barely make enough to survive after the commission is split between the brokerage house and themselves, these folks work tirelessly day in and night to find clients to pitch to and schedules to work around with extreme exuberance.
Agents are briefed on the area, clients themselves, all features and nooks and crannies of the property, learn to the best of their ability how not to become pushy and become creatures of habit to their client, their second partner to help them find the right deal which may or may not always be in their best interest.
Taking advantage of clients may be an exaggeration but when it comes down to taking stock of the properties that were sold this past year, there is truth to be told in their wicked persuasion. No one just âfalls in love with a propertyâ without investigating the downsides first and all of them have them, something realtors tend to sweep under the rug.
As with any deal, sales people want to profit off of their client/customer as much and as fast as possible so they will engage in âfluffyâ networking behavior. They donât really care how you are feeling. They donât want to spend that much time with you but they have to put up with you as part of the job.
They spend extra time prepping, convincing, reaching out, negotiating, bidding, pleasing, small talking in hopes that it will all pay off in the long-run. It takes a lot of extra work with non-guaranteable juicy pay on the horizon which has worked too well in their favor this year as millions of home owners rushed to the most expensive decision of their lives.
While buying my first rental property to lease out to tenants at the bottom of the market in March of 2020, I didnât bother working with an agent. Iâve seen my fair share of sale pitches, open houses, annoying emails and coffee chats with brokers and have never been enticed nor really interested in getting help from them. It feels as if they desperately need to help me not because they want to rather because they need to survive not going back to school. No doubt the process was more confusing and lengthy for me without one yet at the end of the day or shall I say half a year of getting this process straightened out, I felt proud for being able to do a realtorâs job as a 20 year old nobody!
Real estate agents remind me of networking brunch when everyone is there to just take advantage of each other and ultimately solely focus on bettering themselves through snagging a referral or even better position. Itâs pretty sad. I wish people actually cared about my personality or outside life not just my position or title. I never want to come across as pushy since the best gift is giving and it comes back around.
Same deal with an agent.
Their goal is to take the worst possible property on the market or an overpriced nest and entice non-locals to love it. Itâs pretty amazing how well they can entice buyers, especially newcomers. It takes special talent that isnât taught in school. They arenât so much pushy and annoying rather deceptive and sneaky in their ways that have gotten the best of many hesitant buyers as well.
Business Is Too Personal
Every form of business is person to person. Yes everything can technically be automated and replaced by robots, but people donât want to live in that world especially when they are making the most emotional, exhaustive and expensive decision of their lives.
Fine, if you are really lazy you can buy those sneakers via Instagram but never a house.
When it comes to real estate, agents know something about us that we donât and tend to take advantage of us for our faults.
As a senior in HS, I got the chance to take a real estate 101 certification pre-licensed course at a major brokerage firm in NY and learn these secrets.
This brokerageâs sales are in the ballpark of $50-$200 million per month and they had some secrets I did not expect they would teach their perspective realtors about!
Nothing illegal or fishy just plain deceptive and embarrassing on the clientâs end.
I thought we knew better as consumers!
Itâs more psychological and behavioral than anything. An agent acts as a representative to the client, working in all the ways they can to find the property of their dreams while snagging a juicy profit afterwards. They scour the off-market listings, transport them to open houses, meet whenever their client can make it and work to live not live to work most of the time. They live and breathe real estate.
It is full of weekends and holidays as a real full-year job.
Out of the experiences Iâve had with brokers, which Iâm fortunate in all cases they were sincere, honest and reliable, it took a lot of time on my hands to actually find down to earth agents not pushy sales people or market makers.
Not everyone is fit to be an agent but with more real estate agents than properties on the market along with over 106k brokerage firms operating in the U.S and counting, real estate is an easy way out to earn quick cash and build a reputation for yourself outside of school in a different kind of competitive business world.
As with actors at the box office, there are only so many realtors youâve heard of that are making real bank and they follow these tricks to stand out:
-Preparation meets opportunity = success
-Patience is seriously a virtue. The more expensive it is, the longer you have to wait
-Being on time is late, being early is on time
-Dress to impress, first impressions matter most it shows you care
-Look and talk like the client for them to like you better
-Right at the start tell them you will show them X amount of listings, 10â20 is recommended
-Communication is key. Be on their timeline, never yours.
-The more elite the client, believe it or not, the less likely they want to see the property and you in-person. Be prepared to have a clear camera and good angles
These were the seemingly basic yet hidden specifics that only a true realtor can master.
I find when Iâm nervous, Iâm not prepared and top real estate agents Iâve interacted and shadowed in the past emulate a kind of confidence that is magical mixed in with comfort something I wish I could adopt. They all know the specs, details and historical figures of the property inside and out even if they only got briefed on them the other day not something I can say all brokers can do effortlessly. They act as if their property is their baby.
According to what Iâve noticed, and prove me wrong, you need to be extremely flexible, agile, patient, a people person, stellar communicator and not have a life to crush the industry.
On the technical side, becoming a real estate agent just requires a license, recommended internship exposure at a brokerage firm and be above 18 years of age. You donât need a college degree and just like in sports and entertainment, there is unrealistic hope that between a few deals, you are on your way to earning 7 figures.
Sweet Spot
What does success mean to a real estate agent?
When it comes to their salaries, it varies completely. The vast majority of agents are commission-based agents so they earn most or all of their income when they sell or help to buy a house.
E.g. when a family sells their home, they pay roughly 5â6% commission on the sale price. It is then split between the selling and buying agent. If the house was sold for $250k, the agent would earn $7,5000 and by the time the broker earns the piece of commission, up to 50% for new agents, the agents can earn as little as 2% so with this example sale, the agent may only earn $2,500.
With the average transaction amount of $120k according to the National Association of Realtors with $5k per transaction, this would net them on average $6k per year. Pretty decent without a degree but can it last?
Yet this is just the average.
The range in income is extraordinary as it differs by location, presence, brokerage house and of course clientele. You can easily profit off more from one large client in NYC than from 60 deals in Oklahoma.
Opportunity cost is key to remember.
Time = Money.
Where is your time being spent?
One-tenth of real estate agents earned less than $23,000, and 10% earned more than $110,000. You need to negotiate where you are located, who you work for and who you work with to adjust your earnings.
Limit Order
Real estate is becoming way overly concentrated because there is an epic buying spree yet with over 2 million agents, itâs getting out of control and many are relying on success stories of Ryan Serhant from struggling actor to owning his own real estate firm, Serhant making a billion dollar in profits in their first year or Netflixâs acclaimed realtors on their hit show, âSelling Sunsetâ.
We only hear about the top 1% in every industry. The hottest celebrities to brightest agents, but what about the rest of the 99% of realtors struggling and begging clients to get in on a contract in this heated market?
Keep It Real
During my senior year of HS when I had nothing better to watch than âMillion Dollar Listingâ on a Delta flight home from our senior excursion, I desperately wanted to become a real estate agent. Not a car saleswoman, a real estate agent.
As witnessed in the real-estate course I took that year, it no doubt taught me a great deal about what goes on behind the scenes, but at the same time ruined my chances and hope in this cut-throat industry.
I love getting to know new people on a casual basis, touring homes, learning about architecture and design but at the same time, the last thing I ever want someone to feel with me is that I am being pushy, impatient and pitchy.
I want people to make their own decisions while I wait in the car instead.
They can give themselves a tour. They wonât get lost I promise.
Thatâs how I like to be treated when buying a home. Donât you?
Lastly, for the agent to get a head start, it would be helpful if they were paired with a firm with a successful track record. Even Ryan Serhant worked with Nest Seekers years before starting his business. He had an extensive list of exclusive clientele which majority in this case donât bother on negotiating price, pay top-dollar for properties anyway and donât visit the homes as well since theyâre busy growing their wealth or storing it.
Obviously more deals in more expensive areas is the easiest answer to earn more yet without reputation or experience, itâs going to be tough to break into the market. As a result, focusing on what you can control inside of you through your character is key.
I distinctly remember when my family was planning on buying another rental property a couple years ago and we connected with an agent not realizing they were one until they told us after a couple viewings.
We became acquaintances and sparked up conversation at the long line at Trader Joes. Youâre bound to meet someone there. We happened to casually mention to this stranger we were looking for a single family property in the East Village and he pointed us to some listenings. Not only was he not pushy from the start, when it came to the whole process, he didnât bother us! He would just send us newer listings every few weeks and asked for our opinion. He was patient, trustworthy and the best agent weâve worked with.
When did you actually want to get to know the agent as opposed to get away from them?
Most clients feel the latter.
He actually pointed to the things that couldnât be fixed with a property such as location and neighbors, something agents avoid entirely as they want to sweep the property off the market and snoop the profits into their pockets.
From the location to neighbors, these are major hidden deal breakers that agents neglect. Peeling paint or a dented staircase can be fixed in a jiffy. The airport next door sadly wonât.
As someone who isnât a successful real estate agent, my best advice is to remember that people can see through your mistakes and it will cost you more later on if you get caught.
Why make someoneâs house hunting process miserable?
At the end of they day, the more pushy and deceptive you are, the more it haunts your career prospects and possible lawsuits later on.
A home is a sanctuary not a bribe.