PaRealEstateAgt has a good point. I was never a "new agent." I jumped in and decided I would just assume I'd been in the business for awhile. Not that I knew everything, or wanted to convince myself I did, but I wanted to put less pressure on myself to get my first buyer, or my first listing. It was easy from there.

How many closings "should" you be doing in your first year? It all depends on how many you WANT to do, and how hard you're willing to work to reach that number. Yes, it's going to be tougher than once you've got a bunch of sales under your belt (and therefore a more established referral network), but you can still do well.

Depending on how much homes are selling for out your way, 6-8 sales in your area might not be enough to survive, so you may well need to push yourself much harder. My typical sale is just a little under $600,000 (no big deal in L.A.), so I could do as few as 5-6 closings a year and live comfortably if I so chose. I certainly couldn't do that in Nevada or Arizona.

PaRealEstateAgt
Can you share with us what exactly you are doing to get listings and buyers? I just started two weeks ago and I've been trying to come up with a right prospecting strategy. Do you do a lot of call calling and door knocking or maybe you know a lot of people or maybe something completely different?

Ofcourse I can't tell you exactly what I'm doing. That might be counter productive for me. But generally speaking, when I started in Jan, I mailed out roughly 1000 pieces and called about 300 expireds and FSBO's. Got 2 listings in Feb from that. Changed up in Feb to just calling and drip mailing the leads and got 1 listing that need alot of work before going on the market so he's doing that now should be ready this week. Got one lead from my broker and they are staging and cleaning and should be done next week. Mid March went back to mailing so far 500 ish pieces and calling anytime I have down time (no set schedule.) All FSBO's and Expireds.

Things I do differently; cover a 6 county area (I'm not the area expert I'm the alternative option,) I only go after the ones with equity and a reason to move, and I have no listing presentation (just the facts, figures, marketing plan and sign.) This is my current plan and will hope to find an area where I will be the expert in, until then I'll find the ones falling through the cracks where ever they are (within reason.)