Many people have seen fancy postings of successful real estate consultants on the social media. From stories about their closings, their clients’ satisfactions, and the difficult situations turn-around… to stories of their first luxury watches, first luxury car and yes, of course…their 1st property or multiple properties. All these are REAL. They are testimonials of their success stories and injected with marketing intent to brand themselves. These are in fact active agents or consultants that will deliver results if you engage their services.
However, like all things in life, the glorious moments only last a few minutes or short-lifted, but the hard work put behind the scenes is vigorous, emotional straining and sometimes heart-breaking. So, the question remains if this is a “easy money” industry that anyone can make it?

Well, in my opinion, there is no such things as “easy money” or “free lunch”. Everything in life is what we sow is what we will get eventually. Being a realtor is a professional career, gone are the days where there are no regulations and “agents” were free to roam and do what they like. Today, realtors are regulated and closely watch by Government body known as CEA (aka Council of Estate Agency). In any recruitment, by and large, people tends to paint a beautiful picture for you on why the other side is a “greener pasture”. Here are 4 things that they commonly don’t tell you about the real estate career:

 

1. IT IS ALL HARD WORK

There is no fruit without labour, so being a realtor is not so easy. We are an entrepreneur where we need to do marketing, sales and recruitment for our business. To do that, we often need to take up various roles ; some examples below to illustrate:-

  • Be a flyer thrower to the area identified
  • Be a designer for your own flyers/website/posters etc
  • Be a photographer to take quality property photos
  • Be a script writer for all the contents needed for websites/flyers/posters and collaterals
  • Be a brand ambassador for your own business and networking to expand the brand awareness
  • Be a manager to your business to coordinate tasks, schedules and work to be done

Simply put, we are everything to our business and we need to put in our hard work consistently to get the desired result of leads generation, servicing and maintenance and follow up. All hard work has to be put in before any visible results can ensue.

 

2. IT IS NOT JUST A SALES JOB

As mentioned in the previous point (i), this is not JUST a sales job where you sell what is given to you.

We need to set up our business to communicate our services and then generate leads who are in search of our services. We need to catch up with our leads and do a deep dive on their needs and intent before we could effectively help them to look for what they need.

In some instances, we need to sell property that is not even built yet (new launches or building under construction). So, we need to sell our clients or leads, with resources like videos, virtual tours, floor plans, 3D models and showflat, to help them understand what exactly they are buying.

 

3. PURPOSE ENABLE PERSERVERENCE

Statistically, as of 1st Jan 2022, there are 32,414 realtors in Singapore. It might seemed a lot of agents, but if you break it down, how many are actually active and doing this full time?

My guess, it is only about 20% active realtors out there. So 6,500 realtors serving a population of 5.6million people in Singapore. Or if we see from another angle, they are serving about 1million HDB units, and close to 400K private residential properties. Each will be averagely serving about 215 households.
Many realtors are often not active or given up because they could not establish a consistent income stream. However, there are the 20% who remains active and who managed to make a career as a successful realtor.

The difference, from my observations and being one of the active realtors myself, I feel is the purpose you have coming into this industry.  With a clear purpose on what or who you are working for, it will already enable your perseverance when your path hits a hard block.

 

4. RIGHT MIND RIGHT PEOPLE

There are about 1,102 property agencies in Singapore as of 1 Jan 2022. With so many agencies ranging from biggest with over 10K agents to smallest with less than 10 agents, who should you join?
Hopefully by now, with the previous pointers mentioned, you should understand that like any other industries, being a realtor need to have a clear objective, right mindset to start with. Then it is always about finding the right company or agency to work with and the right team to work together.
My own realtor journey has brought me from joining the right agency but not so right team to adjusting within the right agency to join the right team.
It is through a RIGHT agency and the RIGHT team that provides the right platform for me to springboard into another level in my career.
How then do you identify the RIGHT agency and RIGHT team or people to work with?
I suggest doing your research properly via internet search,  attending talks or seminars organized by these agencies and talked to people from the agencies.

You will know that you found the right one when your gut tell you so from these researches.

I hope that my sharing will allow you to have a better picture of what a realtor’s job is like, and you can appreciate that behind those visible and seemingly fanciful postings you see in the public; are hard work, hard work and hard work.

Want to find out more about real estate career in Singapore? Let’s schedule an appointment or drop me a message today!