Good Morning everyone,
I am seriously thinking about taking my realtors license course next month and getting into selling real-estate. It is scary though quitting a job that has a guaranteed paycheck and going to commission. Has any of you done this? Quit your job and jumped right in? How did you make out?

Another concern is health insurance, we are on my husbands and what if he losses his job? We have 2 kids to worry about.

Can you all give me advice on how to start, what to look out for and how to prepare for this? I really want to do it and i know i can be very good at it.

any help will be greatly appreciated

-Heather

Does your current income contribute to the household income?
There had been alot of people asking this in the past. Read through what's available, check with yourself (and family) to see if this is what you have a desire/ passion for. Find out if your character/ personality traits is in line to do real estate.
In short, I think you need the finances and personality to do exceptional well. The rest of us are mediocre agents and find out about the stats of real agents and the real incomes they make.

thx for the reply.

Yes my current income comtributes alot. we may be able to get through about 3 or 4 months without it, but that will be it. So i would have to start producing something after that. that is why im scared to start

Heather:

You could consider a part time or licensed assistant start. The assistant route would at least pay you some salary while you learn the business.

I started out part-time when I got my license. I am in the same situation as you, my paycheck contributed(s) greatly to our household expenses. Unfortunately (or maybe it's fortunately), I got laid off in Sept., so I've been collecting unemployment and doing the Real Estate full-time right now. If business doesn't pick up soon though I'm going to have to go back to a full-time job and do RE part-time again. I do think you can do RE part time though. At least until business picks up and then you can make the decision to quit your full-time job after that. Good luck!

great info guys..thank you.

also if this helps, i will not be wokring for myself. I will be working with caldwell bakers realestate. just an FYI

I'm not sure if I'm going off tangent because I dont know Caldwell Bakers. The closest I heard of is Coldwell Bankers.

Most real estate brokerages are set up where agents are independent contractors (ie 1099) instead of W2. There are very few firms where agents are employees of a broker. You might want to clarify that first.

I would strongly suggest you keep your present job and start on a part time basis until you build the momentum for this business to be self sustaining for you. Initial months are particularly difficult due to incurring expenses prior to receiving an income. As far as doing this part time please keep in mind that much of the buying public is also employed during normal business hours meaning they will likely be wanting to look at properties evenings or weekends which may well not be a time conflict for you.

Keep your full time job and join a real estate firm that allows part timers, that has no desk fees and no monthly charges and has no minimum sales requirements and won't require you to take time off from your other job to attend sales meetings. You'll have to also factor in getting training from the broker or buying your own training from various real estate gurus. You could spend a couple hundred hours reading archives posts from this forum to educate yourself about being an agent in the real estate business. There's no way you should quit your current job if you could only last 3 months as a full-time agent without closing a sale. Most people will tell you to have 6 months of cash reserves and some will tell you to have 9 or even 12 if you are going full time.

Consider foxtons they will start ytou out with as salary.The erning potential is not as high but you need structure and training and you really cant perform properly if you are stressing out about finances.You have your kids to think about,I wouldnt gamble with thier security.
Getting into this game is like starting a new business the checks can be slow to come in the begining or not at all.It does depend much on you but you need time to learn the ins and outs

In my opinon, Foxtons is horrible. I interviewed with them over the phone nad it seemed kind of stupid. The one thing I liked was the base salary and company car,but you get almost a very small split on each sale and they told me they'd have me working at least 60 hours a week. You are more like an overworked employee. I heard that their training is very good as well. I had to deal with them because I had a client that wanted to see one of their listing, and it was a complete pain in the neck to get a showing since the listing agent has to be there (no lockboxes). They don't advertise their properties so nothing sells, mostly in my opinion bc they only pay 1% BAC.

realestate_leader

Perhaps if we learned the ins and outs of spelling and grammar we wouldn't need features like spell check.

Sorry to come off sounding like a hater - but it is a pet peeve of mine. Spelling on this board is atrocious.