I have been a real estate agent for over 15 years. My dad has been an agent since 1978, although he has not sold a house for years. I never wanted to be an agent growing up, but I stumbled into the career after college when I could not find a decent finance job. I struggled my first few years in the business, but still made a living. One of the huge misconceptions about agents is that they don't make much money. That is unless you are selling your house and then you think agents charge way too much!
How much money do agents make?
What confuses many people about real estate agents is the average salary is less than $40,000 a year in the US. The problem with these statistics is that they include all real estate agents. Many agents are part time and many agents don't have a clue what they are doing.
Here are a few reasons why many agents don't succeed:
- They are part time and make very little effort to sell houses.
- They cannot hold a real job, so they become an agent.
- They receive no training on how to sell houses.
- They are only doing it as a hobby and not a career.
There are many agents who sell very few homes or none at all. Those agents drag down the average salary for all agents. The agents who know what they are doing, treat the business as a career, and have some work ethic, make a lot of money. I know of four agents in my office who have made more than $300,000 in a year. That is out of about 12 agents who are working full time and putting in some effort. There are agents who make much more money than that.
I wrote a very detailed article on this here: https://investfourmore.com/2013/11/20/much-money-real-estate-agents-make/
Here is a video as well:
