All Forum Posts by: Seth Botner

Getting laid off sucks. I'm sorry to hear that. I may be able to speak to your situation at a personal level because I've been in real estate for about 2 months now. Here's a few questions/comments that you may want to consider:

1. Do you have sufficient reserves? Is your wife's job enough to cover rent/ other bills? If you have enough reserves to get you through the lean times, you could do well. This is going to be a stressful time. You will be digging into your savings and you will not like it. Startup costs will also bite into the savings as well. I've been told it takes 1-2 years to really start earning good money.

2. Are you in the town you grew up in or have you spent a good amount of time in the area that you have a good number of connections? If you have friends and parents of friends that are willing to spread the word for you, that will significantly shorten the months it takes to get going. There are a lot of contacts you can tap that you wouldn't normally think of.

3. You will want to find a solid brokerage to work with. You learn what you need to in order to pass the state exam and that will get you part of the way but there's still a lot you don't actually know. What are the legal requirements for ____? You will want to find a broker that supplies a lot of support and training if you plan to give it the ole college try.

4. When I was thinking of going into real estate, I asked the same question "is the market oversaturated with agents?" The answer I got was "it doesn't have enough good agents." If you seek to be good or great, you'll do well in the industry. My office has also been saying that typically, we have a lot of people that are going to drop out when association dues come up. With this shifting market, there's going to be a lot more than normal. This will be your opportunity to learn in the tough times to become a great agent. Then, when the good times come back, you'll be making money hand over fist. You'll have built a solid reputation. 

5. Sales could be down but that doesn't mean that buying and selling has completely stopped. Some people would have loved to buy in the last 2 years but have been unable to. There are a few different possible reasons for this. They may need to repair their bad credit. They might not have had a good down payment. Like I said, there are a lot of reasons. If the market truly does crash, you and a bunch of other investors will swoop in and snag a lot of property at a really good price. Additionally, I've heard that out of the last 5-6 recessions (I could be wrong on the number), only saw a significant decrease in home prices. All other recessions had prices stay kinda level. Additionally, we had a large pent up demand and super low interest rates. That would cause a frenzy at any point. IMO, we're going to see a return to normalized prices.

@Seth Botner, sorry to hear about your situation. Why do you want to get licensed in the first place? If the reason is so that you can save on commission by buying a deal or two a year then this was a mistake and waste of time. Being a real estate agent means running a full-time business. Yes, there are some successful part-time agents but they are rare. As others have mentioned, I would seek W2 employment asap. Hope this helps!