Originally posted by @Hannah Kingslien:
Hello everyone,
I've been looking into becoming a real estate agent in Wisconsin, and am looking for advice on how to become one, from someone's personal experience, how they went about it, what they did or didn't do, and what they like or don't like about it.
Any input would be very helpful!
Thanks,
Hannah
Hannah,
My suggestion would be to try to find an inexpensive in-class course with a compressed schedule. In PA we need 60 hours of class work to take the test. The course I went with 10 hour sessions, Saturday and Sunday for 3 weeks and that was it. Hopefully the class will have a test prep portion to it as well to help you pass.
It's best to interview at least 3-5 brokerages to see who will be a good fit for you, your lifestyle and your personality. While interviewing them, ask them if they do reimbursement for the class, which some brokerages do nowadays. (Of course that would be contingent upon you becoming an agent at that brokerage and staying there for 6-12 months or something of that nature.)
Other good questions to ask them would be what are their commission splits, a breakdown of ALL fees (monthly or annually), what their commission cap is, whether they provide leads for you and if the commission changes if they do, how often they provide training and what the topics of the trainings usually are, do they provide mentoring to help you work through deals, etc.
Also, keep in mind that there are fees that the Broker has no control over such as MLS access, ($300/6 mo in PA), Realtor dues if the Broker is a member of the association of Realtors ($600/yr in PA), marketing materials, cost of yard signs, networking associations to network with investors, etc. A reasonable minimum to expect to pay is around $2,000-$3,000 per year as required costs.
I hope this helps!
