New Hampshire Real Estate & Consumer Resources

The meeting with the manager of the local real estate office that had contacted me went very well. She was a very nice person and I liked her immediately. She was easy to talk to and I could tell we would get along just fine. I had decided before the end of the meeting that I wanted to work in that office.

At this point all I had to do was get my license and then begin working in the office. I was excited to get started with my new career and I left the office feeling quite good about it.

My decision to start a career in real estate was ill-timed in the sense that the geniuses who write real estate laws in New Hampshire decided just a few months earlier that all real estate agents had to attend 40 hours of classroom training before being eligible to take the real estate licensing exam.

Before that, all a person had to do was obtain the proper study materials and spend some time studying it and then take the test. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the new law was in response to people who were taking the test and then starting their real estate career and getting themselves into all kinds of legal trouble. It’s the same old story, the idiots of the world who do nothing better than screw things up for everyone else.

I did not like the idea of sitting in some classroom listening to someone drone on about real estate law and all the other irrelevant crap that makes up to real estate licensing exam. I had already been told a few times by people with industry experience that virtually nothing on the exam would relate to what a real estate agent actually does.

It was quite inspirational to learn that the material I had to study for the exam would serve me so well in my new career! I was, however, determined to become a real estate agent and forged ahead.

I checked out the local real estate schools on the Internet and settled on the one that had classes in the most convenient location for me. I forked over the $299 for the class and the $82.50 for the accompanying study materials and it was off to real estate class I went.

This was my induction into the real estate club — a major component of which is writing checks to this one and that. If you are considering a career in real estate, be warned that you will be required to join any number of professional organizations, which of course, require you to pay dues. Then there are things like “Errors & Omissions” coverage to protect you from any mistakes you might make that causes someone to want to sue you.

Calling it a “class” is probably too flattering for what actually transpired each week. It consisted of myself and the other students sitting in rented conference room in an office building with our instructor who basically sat and read through the various study materials with us and would quiz us from time to time to see if we were picking up on the material.

If that had been the extent of it, I’m not sure I would have managed to get through all 20 hours with my sanity intact. The saving grace was that this instructor was a genuine character. He had been involved in various flavors of real estate over the years and had a lot of entertaining stories of his experiences in the business.

I’d have to estimate that he spent nearly a third of our class time telling stories which was a wonderful way to pass time that would have otherwise been spent going over a bunch of very dry and uninteresting real estate material.

I knew all along that all I needed to do was take the study material home and spend some time actually studying it. Although it was entertaining to hear the instructor’s stories, I probably would have done almost as well on the exam by studying on my own and would not have had to put up with the hassle of going to class every week.
Anyone who thought they could just sit through the classes and then pass the exam was probably fooling themselves. For me at least, it was necessary to spend a good deal of time studying the material. And for someone who has absolutely hated studying almost anything as far back as I can recall, it was a bit of a challenge for me to stick with it.

I finished the class a few hours short of the required 20, but that is something else I will give credit to the instructor for. He pretty much saw things they way they really were and despite the fact that he was our instructor, I think we all could tell what he really thought of the whole system and how “necessary” he thought this class was.

I’ve always had an appreciation for people who can see through the various walls of crap that are constructed in front of people who are trying to accomplish something. The fact that government bureaucrats need to make themselves appear useful by spewing out various rules and regulations of questionable value was not lost on our instructor, and for me that made the class more fun and less of a pain than it could have easily been.

Coming Next: The Exam