University of Colorado Masters of Science Real Estate

[Kevin Taylor]

Hello Bigger Pockets Community,

I'm looking at making a career change from the Air Force into Real Estate. I'm about a year out from transitioning from the military and I'm looking at attending the University of Colorado Boulder to earn my MS in Real Estate. I was hoping to get some insight from anyone that got their Masters in Real Estate and learn about how it was and if it helped you land the job that you wanted or helped you go out on your own. Also, any advise from veterans that made a career change into real estate would be extremely helpful. Thank you!

[Irene Nash]

Hi Kevin, thank you for your service and congrats on looking into real estate as a career, it's an interesting profession that puts you in the path of all sorts of people and situations (I mean this in a good way :).

I have not looked into any graduate courses in real estate, but speaking from 20+ years of experience in real estate (and two college degrees in other stuff) I really think the best way to get into real estate is just to get into real estate. 

It's true that there's a lot to know and many agents enter the field not knowing things that are important, but I also don't think you're likely to get the right kind of instruction about those things in a college classroom. I could be wrong.

Can you find an opportunity to shadow an agent or somehow spend some time actually around agents who are working to get a feel for what skills and knowledge you'll need? 

RE is a weird field because you need to be competent, and you also need people to know you're competent. Which means you need to become skillful with marketing, in addition to learning a lot about how to actually do the work. It's easy to end up specializing in just one or the other of those two crucial skills. :)

I'm happy to answer any specific questions, and either way, good luck!