Should I Become A Real Estate Agent?

[Jacob Wathen]

I took a short break from researching real estate investing in order to focus on school and my job. I am still in school but I will have more time to focus on learning about real estate investing in the next few months. 

I am very interested in becoming a real estate investor but I also want to try my hand at becoming a real estate agent. I am curious to see what people would suggest. Are the time and money worthwhile investments to become a real estate agent or should I focus on real estate investing? I am a 20 year old college student and I hope I have a bright future ahead of me with a variety of different job opportunities. But should I try my hand at becoming a real estate agent? 

[Christal M.]

Hi Jacob,

I started off getting my real estate license here in Michigan before I jumped in the Real Estate game. It was very beneficial for me because I ended up purchasing my first home/investment property from another agent in my office and she helped me out a lot with the deal and I ended up living in one unit and renting the other out. I also ended up pocketing a $1,200 check out of the purchase from a commission as an agent. Besides that the other pros were I learned about the contracts, laws, psychology/mindset of real estate agents/brokers and real estate investors, many times they are TWO different mindsets. The cons were it took up a lot of my money and time trying to focus on learning how to act and perform like a real estate agent when my mind was set on being an investor. I would advise that if your heart is not set on learning everything right now and you are ready to just jump in investing and learn from the hard knocks (which is the best way to learn) I would advise just connecting with another investor/mentor and try to become their lap dog sort of speak. Try and do all the things that they don't want to do and learn, learn, learn. A person can read all day but the real experience comes from action and doing and FAILING FORWARD, a term a millionaire real estate investor just told me last week. We all are going to make mistakes in life especially in our real estate business but the most important lesson is to make sure we go out and put forth action and when mistakes happen we learn from it and move forward so the mistake is not a huge issue the next time around. I apologize for being so long winded but I wanted to make sure I gave you my thorough explanation. Good Investing!