Who can’t relate to starting a new job?! No matter what you do for a living, you go through the excitement and worries that come along with starting somewhere new.
But starting a career in real estate comes with some unique situations and feelings most people don’t even think about until they become an agent. Here are 12 things new agents can totally relate to, and agents who’ve been in the business for years can vividly remember about what it took to get where they are in their career:
1. Getting Your License!
Remember how exciting it was to get your driver’s license? Then you can imagine how it feels for a new agent to pass their test and get their real estate license. It opens up a world of possibility and freedom, and you can’t wait to let everyone know you got your license!
2. Getting Your First Business Cards
While you might whip out your driver’s license to show everyone you know when you first get it, most agents don’t go around showing their real estate license. But those first business cards, though… The minute you get your first official business cards with your name, contact info, and professional headshot, you can’t wait to hand them out to everyone you know!
3. Quickly Realizing Real Estate School Doesn’t Teach You Everything
There’s a huge difference between real estate school and being in the field! Real estate school is a bunch of lessons with one big test at the end. But once you’re licensed it’s a lot of big tests that teach you lessons over time. Licensing school will teach you what you need to know to pass the test, but it doesn’t come close to teaching you what you need to know to actually do the work involved with being an agent.
4. Worrying if the 6-Month Rule Will Apply to You
When you’re thinking about becoming an agent, almost everyone with experience in the business tells you to be prepared not to make any money for the first six months you’re an agent. For so many people who’ve been there and done that, you know there’s gotta be some truth to that adage. But every new agent also wonders if that will actually apply to them, and deep down hopes that it won’t! But as each month passes by, they also start to hope it does apply to them, and doesn’t actually end up taking more than a half a year to make any money!
5. Your First Lead
It’s not like you walk in and get handed a client who needs to buy or sell a house. You need to find your own clients! Whether it takes a few days, weeks, or months before you come across someone who is thinking about buying or selling a house, there’s nothing more exciting than the moment you do!
6. Your First Actual Client
The excitement and hope you feel when you get your first lead can quickly lead to the disappointing realization that not everyone who says they’re thinking of buying or selling a house is actually going to do so, or at least do it with you as their agent. It may take coming across a whole bunch of “leads” before a new agent finds their first actual client who wants to buy or sell a house. Once you find one, it’s like the feeling of getting your first lead — multiplied a hundred times! The trick is not showing people how excited you are and acting like it ain’t your first rodeo…
7. Opening a Lockbox in Front of Clients for the First Time
In order to show most houses to a buyer, you need a special device or app that allows you to open what’s called a lockbox, which holds the actual key to the house. It’s not super complicated, but it takes a little practice to get the hang of it. No matter how many times you practice doing it, it’s nerve-wracking to do it for the first time in front of an actual buyer client while they stand behind you watching your every move!
8. Writing Your First Offer
Another thing new agents don’t learn in real estate school — but certainly practice doing before they actually have to do for a client — is writing an offer. Sure they’re pretty standard forms, but there’s a lot you need to know about what’s written on those docs, and what you need to fill out on them. No matter how many you’ve done as practice, the first one you do for an actual client will have you excited and on edge at the same time!
9. Doing Your First “CMA”
Considering how easy it is for people to pop their address into a search bar on a website and immediately get the value of their home, you’d think it’d be pretty simple for an agent to come up with the value of a house for their clients. But the truth is, agents have to do a much more thorough (and accurate!) analysis of a home than those computer algorithms spit out for people online. A “comparative market analysis” (CMA) takes time and skill to do no matter how long you’ve been in the business, but the first one is a doozy!
10. Your First Listing Presentation
When someone wants to sell their house they not only want you to come over and tell them how much their home is worth, they also want you to show them what you’re going to do to get their home sold if they hire you to sell it. Giving a listing presentation can be stressful for agents who’ve listed lots of houses in their career, so you can imagine how stressful it is doing your first one without any proof you’ve ever successfully sold one!
11. Your First Closing
Phew! If you can get through all of the first ten things on this list successfully, you should eventually experience your first closing and get paid for the first time. Break out the bubbly!!!
12. Wondering How Long Before You Don’t Feel Like a “New Agent”
How long is it before an agent isn’t considered a “new agent” anymore? A year? Once they’ve had 10 closings? 3 years? Five?! Nobody actually knows the answer to this question; it varies from agent to agent. But one thing’s for sure: Most agents feel new for a lot longer than they expect to, and then one day they feel like they can’t even remember what it was like to feel that way!
