<p>It certainly takes time and money to get established in RE. In commercial and often for young people in residential the best way to learn and get established is to work for an established agent who can afford to pay you $10 or maybe $15/hr to do their legwork and sit open houses, wash their car etc etc.Probably will take 2 years before you really start getting listings and making sales and become a partner on a team. teams will split earnings on a pre-determined basis eventually going to a full 50-50 deal. </p>
<p>For being a paralegal the AA should be fine. Not sure what either BA degree would add.</p>
It depends on the area you are in, and the brokerage.</p>
<p>In my area, commissions for sales are typically 5%, sometimes 4% and rarely 6%. The commission is (typically, not always) split equally between selling and buying brokers, and then the cut the agent get depends on the broker. DW gets 70%, and when her gross gets over a certain amount, it goes to 90%. I think she has to pay a thou or so in desk fees to the broker, whether she makes a dime or not. Other brokerages use different percentages and have different costs.</p>
<p>For rental listings, she gets a commission of one month’s rent, and she doesn’t split that. If there is another agent involved, they have to collect from the tenant.</p>
<p>“The median annual wage of real estate sales agents was $40,030 in May 2010. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $20,460, and the top 10 percent earned more than $95,220.”</p>
<p>"Brokers and sales agents earn most of their income from commissions on sales. The commission varies by the type of property and its value. Commissions are often divided among the buying and selling agents, brokers, and firms. "</p>
<p>Other than not being able to find a job otherwise, why the heck would any student smart enough to attend and graduate from a very high end college want to work as a paralegal, essentially being the flunky, doing the grunt work, subservient to the lawyer? How does this prepare them to be eventual lawyers? You don’t need to be rocket scientist to be a very good paralegal. Organizational skills are important, and of course the ability to read medical records, etc. As far as writing, other than boiler plate motions, and correspondence, that is the lawyer’s job anyway. But I agree, a paralegal degree is a waste, and a career as a paralegal has got to be not a lot of fun for a very bright graduate of an elite school. Dealing with the people who are lawyers at the larger firms, being under their beck and call, at salaries far less than what those lawyers are getting? Why would any elite graduate do this? And why would I want to hire a paralegal who I expected would be starting lawschool in a year or so. After a year, the paralegal is just starting to fit in to the business as somebody who can be depended on. And then they leave for law school?</p>
<p>I read through this thread and all I could think was that you have never been a homeowner, you dislike math and are not too crazy about wasted time. I would think the opposite of all of those would be helpful when dealing with potential buyers/sellers.</p>
<p>skiblack, </p>
<p>If your company really maintains the view that people using distance learning schools are naive, it doesn’t say much for their opinion of military members. They frequently utilize these programs as a means of earning a degree while dealing with deployments and such. I know a few people who have done so, working tirelessly on writing papers, hours of research and juggling trips to the desert. Just out of curiosity,does your company express those same anti-military views publicly?</p>
<p>You have the wrong poster. I have nothing against online or for profit educations, other than they are far too expensive and often scam their students.</p>
<p>Working as a paralegal in a firm is a pretty decent way to get an idea of what life around and as a lawyer is like. It probably still feels like the lawyers make a ton of money and live the high life but it’s more realistic than watching tv.</p>
<p>An important point. There are exciting and boring aspects to every job. Sometimes boring is preferable to exciting- such as in the surgical world. INTERESTING is wanted, not exciting. It is easy to spend most of your time doing something that is mainly interesting. </p>
<p>Showing houses would be the fun part of real estate for me- seeing inside all of those houses. But then there are the necessary but not fun parts. Real estate would be closer to the top than the bottom of my career choices. But I was able to do something much higher on my list of favorites.</p>
<p>Message to the OP. Can you be PASSIONATE about the field? Or do you see it as an easy way to become rich quickly? Can you be enthusiastic about your other options? Or are they merely ways of earning money? You will be happiest if you answer these questions for yourself. Take an aptitude/interest survey at your school or local community college. These tests (often for free) can help you figure out where you may be happiest.</p>
<p>If you like people, solving problems, and being your own boss, RE is a field that is not hard to enter and can be very well paid. I’v done commercial RE for over 30 yrs and I don’t think there is much else I could have enjoyed most of the time for that long. Plus most projects you work on tend to be around a long long time.I enjoy that aspect.</p>
<p>Add having good salesmanship/marketing skills, the capacity for putting in exceedingly long hours & gas money even at the risk of no payoff, and ability to take rejections & thrive in what can be a cutthroat business and persevere/thrive despite all that.</p>
<p>Granted, most of that’s from observations of friends and relatives working residential real estate markets in the Bay Area, Boston, and NYC tri-state areas.</p>
<p>Sorry, but I never said they were “naive” but in a competative job market, I’m not going to turn down someone who went to a “real” school for someone who did an online course at a for-profit diploma mill.</p>
<p>Military: I’ve hired plenty. They all did their deployments and then went to school at a “real” college.</p>
<p>I stand by my earler statement: Degreee from for-profit online institution equals “no degree.” and the candidate will be evaluated as such.</p>
<p>To be a truly “successful” real estate agent, you need to sell an enormous $ volume of real estate to earn a decent upper-middle income, which also implies that you’ve excellent salesmanship skills, have friend/family connections that generate serious customers (not browsers), and have deep enough cash reserves to weather both the initial stages of your career start-up as well as the inevitable eb and flow of the economy itself. I’ve a Harvard MBA “returning to employment” middle-aged female friend starting out as a real estate agent in an upscale area of a major metropolitan city, and she’s out-of-pocket for her licensing, her desk rent at the agency, out-of-pocket travel/meal expenses, a multiple of agency fees/charges, etc. Many new agents get discouraged, as they spend hours in the office, hours touring properties for browsers, facing miniscule share of the agency-earned RE commission, etc.</p>
<p>I just want to correct a few things with this thread…</p>
<p>First off… Yes I HAVE owned a home before. Sold it and am living back with the folks.</p>
<p>Secondly for whoever keeps saying For Profit schools are a scam… LIBERTY UNIVERSITY is a NON-PROFIT SCHOOL… So is their online division. It has all the proper accreditation by the Middle States Association blah blah blah. Haters are going to hate.</p>