Heeeeeeelp me!

[Sadye S.]

I have a bit of a dilemma. I'm totally new to starting a business, but proficient in running a property management company. I'm a licensed salesperson in GA, and will soon have a PM license for SC. Given that I'm a salesperson, I need a broker to oversee me in starting a PM company. I found the PERFECT one, or I thought I did. I'm still not 100% sure about how I feel on this.

We met a few months ago and hit it off. Her department is commercial sales and has never done property management. She told me she'd still like to do sales, but with my company. So, since we're in the developmental stage right now, I told her I could 'rename' the company to fit her in. She loved it. She's an associate broker in a bigger company right now and would have to leave there to become my broker. As payment, we agreed that I'd pay half of her brokers fees and if she brought a client to my department, I'd give her 50% of the proceeds. 

Things were going well until today. I got a text from her asking if I was planning on getting an office. This is verbatim: "I wanted to say that office is really important in real estate for rentals and sales. If you have a captive income for rent, we can start aiming to use that for our office. Without that there will be no existence and I won't be able to earn an income which is my main livelihood. Clients would need a place to go, etc."

Then another shortly after: "Were you looking to give me some type of monthly income as the company is sole proprietorship by you? Usually there is a set of income for the broker which of course along with that would be a broker participation in some area of work."

I planned on working from home for the first year to offset all of the money that I'm spending on license fees, marketing, website costs, government fees.. just a TON of fees! I've never asked her for a dime even when she wanted to add a sales department to my company. I know this is long, but any advice/thoughts would be appreciated. I'm lost.