If you love selling, consider a career in real estate. Whether you are a school leaver or a working adult thinking of earning extra income, you should explore the real estate business. You need not be highly qualified to enter this field. As long as you love “selling” you will survive.
What is real estate?
The real estate profession has expanded and offers one of the widest career selections in the business world today.
Helping people buy and sell homes, office buildings, industrial property and corporation farmland, property management, land development, mortgage banking, urban planning, real estate counselling, appraisal and research are all aspects of a career in real estate.
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Advantages and Rewards of a Career in Real Estate
A career in real estate provides flexibility and freedom to set your own pace. Income directly reflects your efforts, with no limits on what astute, hard-working men and women can earn. Successful people in real estate are goal-oriented, persevering, self-motivated, ambitious and people-oriented.
The rewards of a real estate career are a potential for high earnings, status in the community, autonomy, time freedom, helping people, the intellectual challenge and the satisfaction from those accomplishments.
Working in real estate allows for independence and choices of environment in which to work, such as affiliation with a large or small firm as a listed salesperson.
With more experience and upon passing of an additional exam, becoming a real estate broker is the next step. Brokers can own their own businesses and employ other salespeople.
How do I become an estate agent?
According to an experienced real estate professional, there is a perception that estate agents are all highly successful multi-millionaires.
The perception is that they make money easily, and the job is easy. Just go around showing houses - how difficult can that be?
There can be nothing further from the truth than this perception. According to him, estate agency is a difficult job. The hours are long, the income uncertain and the heartaches plenty.
So sometimes, when you see a middle-aged person intending to switch careers to become an estate agent, people are surprised and curious.
What could have gone wrong with their job, career or life for them to consider a switch to a completely new career, one for which they neither have the training, nor the experience? What would make a person contemplate such a paradigm shift in their lives?
Times are tough. And things are expected to continue to get harder in Malaysia. The prices of goods and services seem to be on an uncontrolled uptrend. Salaries and incomes do not seem to be able to keep pace with this rise.
It is perhaps this set of circumstances that have driven some people to contemplate a switch in career.
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Someone must have told them that as an estate agent, you will have the opportunity to have unlimited income. You would be your own boss, decide your own hours and chart your own destiny.
Real estate agency does give you all those things promised. But let’s make it clear here that this level of success comes at a price. There is no easy path to riches. It comes with a certain level of sacrifice.
You will need to be prepared to compromise time with your family, your evenings and weekends and your social life. On the flip side, you are your own boss and your success and failures are entirely your own.
This article on Careers in real estate continues next week.
So how do you get into the world of real estate agency?
Practitioners in this business are classified into two categories:
a) Real estate negotiators; and,
b) Real estate agents.
(a) Real estate negotiators
They are sales people who work for and under real estate agents. The difference between them principally is that estate agents have the necessary academic qualifications and have met the minimum experience, expertise and standards set by the governing board for the industry, the Board of Valuers, Appraisers & Estate Agents, under the purview of the Finance Ministry.
(b) Real estate negotiators
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They need not have the academic qualifications required for getting registered as estate agents. What they need to do before they can start practising is to get themselves registered with the board as registered real estate negotiators. Before they do that, they have to attend a two-day course called the Negotiator’s Certification Course. In this course, they will be taught the basics of estate agency, touching on law, the Valuers, Appraisers & Estate Agents Acts, the Estate Agency Standards etc.
At the end of the two days, they will be awarded a certificate of attendance, which they will need to present to the board before being registered. Once registered, they will be given a practising tag, which they will have to display prominently during the course of their workday.
To those contemplating a career in real estate, welcome! The challenges are tough, but the rewards and satisfaction more than make up for it. Choose the right agency, choose the right mentor and half the battle is already won.
Career Information
Colleges and universities now offer a variety of real estate and related courses. At many of these colleges, students can specialise in a programme that leads to a bachelor’s degree in real estate. Some universities offer graduate level courses.