Introduction
Discover Getting Into Real Estate with my three-step guide to successfully kickstart your career in the real estate industry.
Welcome back, everybody, to another desk post where I answer your toughest, hottest, most in-depth questions about real estate success, entrepreneurship, life—anything that makes sense. Today, one of the most trending topics that we’ve found is people looking for how to get into real estate. It’s that simple, and that’s what we’re going to talk about right now. These are my three steps for how to get into real estate.
Step 1: Get Licensed
Now, I don’t know what it is—maybe it’s 2021, the year of change. Maybe you’ve lost your job, or maybe you quit your job because you were like, “Screw this, Biff. I don’t work for you anymore, selling toilets.” And you’re like, “You know what I’m going to do?
I’m going to do what that guy on YouTube does—that guy that sells real estate. Didn’t he just sell a place for $132 million in two days in Palm Beach and break a world record? Yes, he did. I want to go do that just like me.” And that’s why we’re all here, right? That’s why you’re here with me. I understand; I totally, totally, totally get it.
So, Step 1 for getting into real estate: You need to be licensed.
It’s the same thing as driving a car, being a lawyer, or being a doctor. You cannot do any profession in this country or anywhere that affects other people’s livelihoods—physically, mentally, and financially—unless you are licensed through an accredited school by the state.
I still think they’re doing them in person, but mostly you can do all of these things online. Wherever you are in the world—in the United States or any other country—you can look up, go on the internet, and look up real estate school, okay?
Real estate license and where you are. There are probably a handful of different schools, and you can take the course. You go through and learn about super simple things like:
What is a house? What’s an appraiser? What is this law? is ethical? is not? And it’s a lot of information that you will never, ever, ever use again. But isn’t that what school is all about? Yep.
In some states, it’s different. In some states, you can take the school test over and over and over.
Others, like Florida, you get to take it twice, and if you fail it, then you’ve got to wait another 30 days, right? In other countries, the rules are completely different. Every municipality has different rules for how to get into real estate.
In some countries, you don’t just do it in 75 hours; you have to go through an intense real estate program that lasts years and years and years. Once you pass the school test, then you sign up to take the state test. But the state test is harder, so make sure you study.
I know I make selling homes seem super simple and tons of fun—I do it on YouTube, social, all over, and on Million Dollar Listing on Bravo—but there is a seriousness to the work, right? And there’s a massive level of responsibility because you are advising people on probably their biggest purchase or sale in their entire life.
You have a fiduciary duty now to that client, and you are taking on a significant amount of responsibility when you work with your new clients. And note, too, that you have to eat what you kill. The minute you get that license, you’re not making money tomorrow.
There is no paycheck rolling in every Thursday afternoon or Friday. Eighty-two percent of people who get their real estate licenses quit within the first year.
But let me tell you this: if you have the entrepreneurial spirit, and if you want to work just for yourself every day for the rest of your life, and if you don’t want anyone breathing down your neck telling you, “You should be doing this, doing that,” and you want to make as much money as you can, being a real estate agent is an amazing, amazing, amazing career.
So, Step 1 is getting that real estate license.
Step 2: Find a Sponsoring Broker
Step 2 to getting into real estate: You need a sponsoring broker.
Typically, an agent who’s been in the business for at least two years, who’s sold enough real estate to be able to apply for the brokerage license—which is a separate course, separate test, the whole thing—and then that broker can start bringing on agents underneath them.
So you need that broker, which is a brokerage company, like myself in New York, Serhant, or Keller Williams, or like Century 21, or Coldwell Banker, or The Agency, or all of these companies. These are called brokerages. You go to one of those brokerages, and you interview.
You say, “I’m a newly licensed salesperson. I am hungry. I want to hustle. This is where I live. This is what I know. I would love to work here.
“And there’s a good chance that they could give you a spot. But you need that sponsoring broker to go online, okay, under the state’s website and select your name next to your license and associate your license with their brokerage.
Once that’s done, then you can start running around the streets, talking to all your friends, everybody—tell them you’re all in real estate and that you’re ready to help them buy, sell, or rent any property ever in that state.
Step 3: Train and Gain Experience
Step 3 is the one you’re going to like the absolute least: What the [__]] do you know about advising people on buying or selling homes? What do you know?
Step 3 is the most important, and it’s now you need to train with that sponsoring broker. Typically, every brokerage has a training program, and you can go into that training program, and hopefully, you can find a more senior agent who’s really busy, and you can be their apprentice, okay?
You can go into a mentorship program, a shadowing program, and then you can learn underneath that agent while you do all the work that they don’t want to do anymore.
And that’s fine because you’re brand new; you just got into this business. That agent has buyers; that agent has sellers; they’ve got to do lots of emails; they’ve got to do contracts, so they want you to help them take a lot of that work off their shoulders so they can go in and just be rainmakers all day long.
And you’re going to learn; you’re going to be part of the conversation; you’ll be CC’ed on emails; you’ll understand, “Oh, who’s this person? What’s that person doing? What’s this?” And ask tons and tons and tons and tons of questions, okay?
Now, if the brokerage that sponsors your license doesn’t have that kind of program, then you can start looking for teams. There are plenty of teams—you could do the open houses, you could do the buyer showings, you could just be there as an intern, really learning with that team and seeing how they operate.
What do you do when you talk on the phone to somebody you’ve never spoken to before? What do you need to know? Are you going to go show a home?
You don’t know anything about the home—who built it? What kind of wood siding is on the house? When was the chimney built? When was it last inspected? There’s a lot of work you’re going to need to do, and there’s a lot of information you need to absorb.
It’s going to take some time, so being on a team is a great way to really just be shotgunned into the business because you’re going to be helping out a bunch of different people, and you’ll be surrounded by a good family atmosphere because teams stick together.
If you’re on a team, don’t just sit there and get people coffee and do their contracts and print things and scan things because that’s what they told you to do and then say, “Hey, you never promoted me.
” No. Do that stuff because that’s what you were hired to do, but then start to be the role before you are the role. So you want to be an agent on that team? Step up early; don’t wait. Tell them you’re happy to take that client out—no problem. What are they looking for? They want something that’s ten dollars?
No one else on the team wants to do it? You’ll do it. You know why? Because you’ve never had a client before in your entire life.
You’ll do it. Step up. Let’s go. Do the work. Put in the hustle. Be the role before you are the role—that’s what big money energy is all about.
My first year in the business, I made just over $9,000, but your first couple of years, especially your first two, you need to think about the real estate business like grad school, okay? You probably didn’t go to graduate school.
If you did, good for you. But you’ve got to put in the time, you’ve got to put in the effort, and you’ve got to think about it like a long game. It’s not a short game.
You’re not going to get rich quick in real estate. But over time, you can make more money than you ever thought possible, and you’ll be able to build an incredible career for yourself and the people around you.
Conclusion
Those are my three steps.
Step 1: Get licensed.
2: find a sponsoring broker.
3: train, train, train, train. Learn as much as you can, and be the role before you are the role.
I hope you found this helpful. If you did, make sure to like this post, share it with someone who’s thinking about getting into real estate, and leave me a comment with other questions you have or anything else you want me to answer in these posts.