I hear that real estate agents have a flexible career.

How many hours do you usually spend in your real estate office?
Do you have mandatory hours or days you have to work?
Would working from home be an option if you have a full time job?

It is very flexible, but only AFTER you know what you are doing.

A good agent spends very little time in the office. I might be in my office 5-6 hours per week, mostly for meetings and an occasional floor shift.

My home office is fully decked out with all the latest technology and it is there that I do most of my non-client related work. Of course the client stuff is mostly on the road.

Having said all that, if you are brand new, you may need to invest in some office time. You can learn a lot on the Internet, but a good proportion of your early education will consist of absorbing technique from the more talented agents in the office.

The agents in my office are drawn to me like a sponge, they attach themselves to me like barnacles, trying to learn all the advanced techniques. I pat them on the head and send them on their way, giving them little tidbits to chew on. But seriously, the quickest way to learn the business is to shadow the power agents, and you can't do that from home.

So, once you are good, you can run from home. But starting out, you will need to be in the office quite a bit.

If an office gives you "mandatory" hours then you are now an employee not an independent contractor and that makes it sticky with the IRS.

Floor time for my office is optional of course but in order to be considered for floor time we are required to attend the weekly meeting, go on caravan, and do two open houses a month. If we choose not to do that, then we are not eligible for floor time.

Sometimes the only time I am in the office is for floor time or the meeting.

I do think a lot of agents misunderstand what the "flexible schedule" really means. It does not mean you work only when you want to. At least not in my market.

You do have to be flexible - flexible enough to be available when the buyers are ready to go out or they will find someone who IS ready willing and able to go out with them.

And BTW, several different times I have had to refer buyers to another agent in my office because I already had an appt. and was unavailable at the time they wanted to come & THEY BOUGHT SOMETHING! (one was a VERY last minute appointment, calling me at 7pm and wanting to go out the next morning at 9! That guy bought a $260,000 house! The other ones from that SAME WEEKEND bought a 310,000 house!)

My home office is fully decked out with all the latest technology and it is there that I do most of my non-client related work. Of course the client stuff is mostly on the road.

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What should a agent have in there home as far as technology to help them when they are away from the office?

I'm glad you asked. Well, let me look around here. To my left is an HP Scanjet 8250 with the automatic document feeder. To the right of that is a 21-inch SyncMaster 213T monitor. That's my little one. To the right of that is my Dell 30 inch IPS LCD display. Very nice for doing work on picture and sound. The two monitors are hooked up to my Cyberpower gaming tower which is decked out in neon lighting and has an Intel Core i7-965 overclocked to about 4 Ghz, liquid cooling, 12GB memory, a 256MB SSD drive for programs, a 1.5TB drive for data, and an external 2TB drive for backups, and a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 motherboard, as well as a 1GB NVidia GeForce 9800GT video card. On either side of my monitors are my Polk Audio bookshelf speakers for sound, hooked up to a Proton D940 stereo receiver. Farther to the right is a studio rack which contains a second computer - a HP xw6200 workstation which has additional storage space and was my old system before the Cyberpower. Still use it now and then and it is a fully functional backup which I keep current with programs that I use every day. If the Cyberpower explodes, I can still operate. All computers run Windows 7, but are dual booted with Windows XP in case I ever get nostalgic and want to revisit some of my older games which do not run well on the newer operating systems.

Of course a computer is useless for designing interesting real estate stuff without good software, so I am outfitted with Adobe Master Collection CS5 which includes the latest versions of Photoshop for photo work, Dreamweaver for designing and maintaining web sites, Illustrator for working with vector art, Indesign for doing all my newsletters and brochures, and Premiere Pro for video work. I don't use Premier much, I prefer working with Avid Media Composer 5 which is used for editing most Hollywood features. I just like the idea of using the same editing system used by the biggest pro editors. It is very powerful and hard to learn, which is why I like it. Also have the Boris Box Set for adding video effects. In addition, all the other usual suspects, Adobe Acrobat Pro, Microsoft Office 2010, Outlook which coordinates everything with my Blackberry, and a raft of minor utilities for converting from this to that and whatnot.

Also in the studio rack is a Lexicon MPX 100 reverb and effects unit that I use to improve my voiceovers. Below that is a SHURE ULXS4 wireless microphone preamp hooked into my sound system, and a Mackie 1842VLZ studio mixer for mixing all the various things that I own that produce sounds, including a Kurzweil PC88 keyboard, an Ibanez Pat Metheny signature guitar played through a Johnson Millennium 250 amp, and several sound modules including a Korg NX5R and my favorite: a Roland XV5080. In front of the studio rack is my 4-line Panasonic wireless phone station which transmits to 4 cordless phones lying around the house. Also a Canon printing calculator to the right of the phone. Underneath the table that holds all this is an HP Laserjet 4200 laser printer, a shredder, and a Powerware 9125 pure sinewave output uninterruptible power supply to keep everything insulated from the vagaries of the electric company. Behind me is a desk that contains my color laser: an HP 2600n for unimportant fast color output, and an HP OfficeJet Pro K8600 color inkjet that produces better color ouptut than a color laser, but is much slower. Important color output (flyers, newsletters, brochures, etc) are sent to PSPrint.com which does a beautiful job with printing my stuff. Oops, forgot my fax: a Brother 4750 Laser Plain Paper Fax (Best fax machine I have ever owned).

Now do you need all this stuff? Of course not. But you need a fast computer with a lot of memory, a good scanner, a good phone system, a good smartphone, decent black and white and color printers, and a big monitor. You also need a high quality fax, and a high quality copier. Some of these can be combined these days into an all-in-one machine, but I prefer separates. You can save money though with an all-in-one, although I would get the best one available if I were going that route. You also need a good camera. That has been discussed at length elsewhere on this board.

That is what I am working on now, upgrading my camera and computer. I want to make sure I have the knowledge and the right technology I need before I begin to take real estate courses.

I am a new agent and I spend about 20hrs a week at the office, but do work from home quite a bit. Dealing with clients, lenders, inspectors, and appraisers scanning documents and making phone calls back and forth. I plan on spending a lot more time at the office though. There are about a 100 agents in my office and Ive probably only met about 35, so yes working from home seems pretty common. I've been licensed for about 6 months now. I have heard of offices that are more like a job, where you have mandatory floor time, classes, and training, so I guess it could also depend on your broker/agency.

Thanks for the information everyone
How many transactions have you closed so far?

I haven't spent more then an hour in at my brokers office in the last 2 and a half months. But then like Navarac I use my home office. However I've been dealing with some Chemotherapy treatments for the last 2 months though that has kept me down some, but still managed to close on two deals and put another under contract.

I agree also with Navarac what you need at your home. You need the camera regardless where your office is. I don't think you need a huge monitor though they are nice. Two small smaller ones will do, and you don't really need two. Just if you go with two you will never go back. I don't feel you need a fax machine really at all. But at least you need a flatbed scanner with an ADF. The ADF is a must. Unless you like scanning single pages at a time. I have a fax machine because it's in my multifunction machine. I have a Brother Mulifunction color laser machine (which I think is about to die). I prefer to use Myfax to receive faxes and send. That way if you have a smartphone you can view faxes on the go. Plus everything is in a PDF file when you receive it.

Another thing you need regardless of where your office is located is a good PDF program. Adobe is good, but pricey. I use Nitro PDF. Also learn to use PDFs. I absolutely hate when I get a contract from another agent and it's been scanned as a bunch of separate jpeg files. Grrr.....

My office situation is the same as yours Colorado.

Best wishes and prayers for a rapid recovery.

Ditto, Colorado. I'm sorry to hear of your illness. But kudos to you for keeping the deals going in spite of it all!

My Broker has an office, but I've never been to it. Never met him in person, either. I work from home.

I can't imagine! Our brokerage is like a small family. I sometimes see my broker several times a day, let alone a week. LOL

Well that's an exaggeration, but I do see my broker often. He's like a dad (in the context of real estate.)

I haven't spend 10 hours in my Brokers office in the last year. My wife has an office in our home on the main level and I have one 2 floors down so we can each have privacy when needed.

Are there any advantages or disadvantages to having a office at home to work from?