Realistic goals for first year real estate agent

[Nickolas Rossol]

So i'm wondering if some of you more experienced guys can give me some insights into what I can really expect to make my first year in real estate. I'm planning on getting my license this fall after I finish my internship for the summer and jumping head into the real estate game immediately after college. I already have some great sales experience for someone my age due to my internship.. I have sold 75k worth of painting jobs and produced over 45k for the summer so far with nothing more than me and 7 of my buddies from high school. My goal is to hit 100k by the end of august. I am only 19 years old and it's a crazy feeling having this much success so far while other kids my age are still working minimum wage jobs. This internship opened my eyes to the world of sales and is what really made me want to do real estate. The personal growth you get from working for yourself and trying to hit your goals is not only satisfying but much more fun than I expected it to be. If I went into real estate at 21-22 years old with this same work ethic how much would I be looking at making in my first year? I know there are so many factors, but would 100k be possible? 

[Joel Owens]

You work on your business everyday. What you learn is that there is always more to learn. It's almost scary but you push yourself daily to have fun and keep absorbing the knowledge.

Commercial agents average about 80k a year. Many work for a firm starting out and split is 50/50 usually.

So say commission on a deal is 80k to listing brokerage then 40k goes to brokerage. If you have 3 guys on a team to split 40k it goes generally something like this.

Senior broker - 20k, associate broker 12k, junior agent 8k.

So as you can see the junior agent has to do tons of deals to make anything.

As a principal broker with my own firm I keep it all minus business costs. I generally specialize working on the buyer side transacting. I deal with owners but prefer to get something off market and sell to one of my buyers.

If you are on the listing side you can spend a ton of money marketing a property. If it doesn't sell you are out the cash. So generally I have owners that say ( I do not want to list it or market it but if you have a buyer i would sell it for XX price). I say great I do not want to list it either! lol

Big difference between me and the larger firms is I focus on taking the time to find my clients what I think to be good properties to purchase. Listing brokerages they tend to want to do volume at any cost and talk buyers into buying a property even if it is a dud or high risk. Since I keep it all per transaction I can do 5 transactions for example to their 30 or 40 closings.