Is Owning Your Own Real Estate Brokerage Profitable?

[Dylan Tanner]

Hi All,

I've been in real estate for 10 years. My first 6 years were in residential and the last 4 have been in commercial. I've been lucky to do better then the average agent on both sides of the field and have been very grateful of that. Being in my late 20s, I have a very deep desire to follow the goals I've set out in my life and one of those goals happen to be opening my own real estate brokerage.

For those who have their own brokerages, are they as profitable as you had hope? Does keeping that extra 10-40% make it worth the risk and effort of opening your own office?

My vision is to be a broker who is practicing, bringing in my own business and also sharing leads to the agents in house for a bit of a larger split to the house. Since having experience in both commercial and residential, I'd like to be able to handle both types of transactions and not just specifically one. Of course there are other things I'd plan on offering the agents in house, like training, incentives, maybe even profit sharing but my general questions are above.

I would love to hear some insight from some of the professional on this forum. Thank you all in advance!

[Mark Updegraff]

I'm going for it!  I know @Joel Owens is probably right, but I always want to find out for myself!  I'm trying to enter a market with some pretty deep pockets, and it isn't easy.  I've been cold calling to recruit and getting stone walled.... I won't give up though.  I've got a couple newbies that I'm going to train, and 2 that I've trained for a year.  We definitely have the best deal for agents, but right now the push back I'm getting from people in other organizations is that "I like the culture"  and "I like the training" and "I like my mentor"

Ugg... I'll keep you all posted :D