So Why Did He Quit Real Estate?
I’ve just created this brand-new category in my blog called “Real Estate Career” which I will use to bore my readers with some of my thoughts regarding the reality of working as a real estate agent. At least as I see it.
My reasons for getting into real estate were probably not the best reasons in the world, and that’s much easier for me to see now that the whole experience is behind me. Basically, I needed a job. Having been laid off after more than 20 years in the high tech industry, I was looking for something new to do.
I never particularly cared for the work I had done for all those years. It was a job, which equaled a paycheck and that was about it. The longer I did it, the more I longed to escape from it and do something else. I loathed the corporate world and only wished I had been smart enough to figure out what it was I really should have been doing when I was a lot younger.
I viewed my lay-off as an opportunity to try something else that I had been wanting to do for some time. I had been dabbling in the stock market with a few small successes and thought it would be a wonderful way to make a living and avoid putting up with all the crap that goes hand-in-hand with working in the corporate world. I would now be able to dedicate myself full-time to learning how to trade stocks!
To make a long story short, things did not quite work out as I had hoped. I could probably write a book on that experience alone, but will save that for another day. Going in I had heard that only 10% of people who try trading for a living are successful. Needless to say, I was not one of those 10%.
The good news was that I did not lose huge sums of money. The bad news was that I was not making any either. My wins and loses pretty much evened out and being under funded, my time to learn was limited. I gave it up after a couple of years and in retrospect, am quite glad I did.
It was as stressful and emotionally draining as the books I had read warned and worse. For those that care, I was trading e-mini futures (mostly S&P and Russell 2000) and it was quite exciting at times and quite devastating at other times. Without total emotional control, it is something that is virtually impossible to master. Frankly, I was glad when it was over!
After I decided to quit trading, I began to realize that I would probably have to start looking for a “real” job. Being someone who is so turned off by the notion of a “traditional” job, my interest was piqued one day while reading through one of the major online employment sites when I saw that one of the big real estate outfits was looking for agents.
Real estate was something that had crossed my mind a few times over the years and the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. I knew there were no set hours that agents had to abide by. Too many years of waking to the sound of an alarm clock alerting me to the fact that it was time to get up and once again drive off to spend my day doing a job I had grown to despise made me pretty reluctant to get back to any kind of typical work schedule if it could be avoided.
There were also other freedoms enjoyed by real estate agents that the typical office worker could only dream of. There was no boss in the traditional sense. Sure, every office has a manager but in my experience, the manager was there more to help agents with problems than to tell agents what to do.
Imagine that! A helpful manager! Too many years in the corporate world have had an effect on my opinion regarding managers I’m afraid. Boy did I have some doozies! However, the experience with my manager during my time in real estate was nothing but positive.
Beyond the infamous “up time” or “floor time” (more on that later) real estate agents set their own schedule. You want to come to work at 11:00 a.m.? No problem! Want to work from home? No problem! Being a real estate agent seemed like a pretty cool way to make a living and I don’t know how many people told me that you sure can make a lot of money in that business. I was fired up and ready to go!
I picked up the phone and called the toll-free number that was in the employment ad I had seen on the web. I talked to a nice lady who took my information and told me I would be contacted soon by one of the offices in my area that was hiring.
In retrospect, that’s kind of funny now since I know now that most real estate offices are always hiring! It seems there is always room for a new agent in the office and there must be a pretty significant wash-out rate to keep the cycle going. In fact I am still getting postcards from some of the big local agencies who want me to know how wonderful it would be for me to come work for them. If they only knew!
Anyway, within 20 minutes of my calling the toll-free number, a nice woman called from the local office and we set up a meeting. I was psyched and ready to begin raking in the bug bucks as a hot-shot real estate agent. It was time to get to work!
Coming Next: Back to school!
