Brown Harris Stevens CEO Bess Freedman put it perfectly when describing what it takes to be a REALTOR®, especially these days.
“You only eat what you kill,” she said succinctly, and that pretty much sums it up. It’s a residential real estate jungle out there. If you can’t complete the journey that starts with handing someone your business card and ends (for the time being) with handing them the keys to their new home, then you’re going to go hungry a lot.
It has been said that great leaders (or REALTORS®) are “born, not made,” meaning that personality types distinguish a person that people will willingly follow and respect (or employ to help them buy or sell a house).
Remember the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross,” in which real estate salesmen were under intense pressure to close deals or be fired? The office manager, who drew a straight salary, was constantly belittled as being weak and having no real clue how difficult it was what they did. “You wanna work here…CLOSE!” bellowed actor Alec Baldwin, playing the business owners’ lieutenant, to the cowering agents.
That was a screenplay, but the words are kind of true in real life, aren’t they? Everyone has bills to pay, but there are few professions in which you only get paid once you have a contracted sale. At the end of every two-week period most employed workers collect their wages, regardless of whether they were wildly successful or utter failures.
Not REALTORS®. Theirs (yours) is a high-stakes endeavor in which you can prepare to the hilt, establish perfect relationships, be willing to do just about anything for the client and still get burned. All it takes is a higher bidder you’re not repping to ruin your day, week or month. Unlike playing the ponies, it’s win only. There is no place or show. Very few brokerages pay agents salaries, and the ones that do don’t do it for long unless they see a serious ROI.
In most jobs, we’re told that the harder you work, the more money you will earn. That’s not always the case with real estate agents. The less you earn, the harder you have to work, meaning spending countless hours cold-calling, lead-generating, working on social media, etc. Agents who regularly earn commissions are mostly busy with their clients. They’re working hard but without having to grind as much and as long generating new listings to represent and homebuyers to guide.
Most agents are well educated, personable and super-smart. They took to the business for differing reasons, but early in their lives very few planned on being what they’ve become. Why? Because not many schools or colleges offer classes and majors intent on sending their grads out as REALTORS®. They concentrate on professions that pay salaries. Of course the same skittish financial future might be said for music, art, photography and, sad to say, journalism students, but that’s another story.
It must be a jolt now to agents who started their careers just a few years ago and got used to bidding wars, plenty of inventory, historically low mortgage rates and lots of clients seeking safe havens from the pandemic. Now it’s the new normal, which is the pre-pandemic old normal, only with inventory issues, too-high mortgage rates and fierce competition for new clients and listings.
A great company culture, tech stacks and having multiple social media platforms won’t make your car payments or pay food bills. Only signed contracts will. The seasoned pros, who have been through the ups and downs of cyclical markets and figured out how to do well either way, are the strong, the ones who will survive. Be one of them.
