QUOTE (JDaley @ Nov 19 2010, 07:32 AM) This thread has been ruined, what useful information has long been buried thanks to posts like the one above. Your post doesn`t contain anything relevant to the discussion other than name-calling so lets just quit it and move, or lets focus on the issue of part-time realtors (still relevant to this discussion, I believe) and the effect they have on the business. Do you know of part-time lawyers, or part-time accountants, or part-time engineers? I`m pretty sure these guys don`t do either job well and are mostly in it for the quick-buck (it seems that way). And some use this forum simply as a means to promote what small business they do have. The CREA should deal with this issue as a next priority since it gives the pros a bad name.
Since you seem to be willing to move on and stop the personal attacks, let me respond.
Many lawyers work part-time so are many doctors. The stress level of dealing with other people`s problems is just too high so a large proportion either takes a lot of vacation or limit their working hours. Furthermore, not every Realtor is in it for the money. I have invested in Real Estate for as long as I can remember, i.e. 30 years. I got badly burned in 1982 so I cooled it until I could handle vacancies without laying awake at night.
My strategy was to first invest in the stockmarket using my savings. This was not always easy either. Whether you invest in Real Estate or in the stock market, you always seem to be waiting for the turn-around. Anyway, I became financially independant and retired (or better semi-retired) in 2006. Around 2000, I decided to diversify and increase my portofolio`s proportion of real estate investments; In 2007 I became a REIN member because there was so much too learn and I enjoyed the positive attitudes of many REIN members.
Like many who retire early, after a while I became bored and decided to see how it was on the otherside of the fence, i.e. becoming a Realtor. So I went through their education program and learned many things. I also noticed that many new Realtors were told about the golden pot during those courses (although not about the fact that the golden pot stood at the end of a rainbow). I also noticed that many of the aspiring new Realtors were naive, to say the least. Several had never even owned or bought a house on their own. Then there were the guys just out of high school. No wonder 80% of them were likely to fail in the first year. But there were also a number of aspiring Realtors that had already a lot of exposure through close relatives already in the profession - true Realtor dynasties. Then there were people like me, who wanted to learn about Realtorship and augment their overall real estate knowledge.
Although the education offered was far from perfect, it was the same as offered on Mount Royal College (now a university in Calgary). It lasts 3 to 6 months education depending on your pace. Nearly 50% of the content was directed towards ethics and knowing the law. There are an enormous amount of issues when selling or buying for third parties (arm`s length buyers and seller, in other word clients). The courses did go into commercial real estate, rural real estate and of course residential real estate. Overall, I was impressed although some of the material was inconsistent (and when they dealt with soil quality, I as a geologist I knew it was sometimes outright erroneous).
Upon getting my license, I met lots of other Realtors, it is a pretty upbeat bunch and you have to be, I learned pretty soon, because it is a very competitive business. Every buyer has already a friend who is a Realtor. So if you really want to survive, you do it full time and you have to build your clientele out for many years. Numerous Realtors can just not afford to live below the poverty level for years while building their practice. So they have to keep their old career or take on a job on the side. I met one Realtor who was at it for four years and had to work as a waitress to pay the bill. The attrition is attrocious.
I was fairly succesfull in my first 6 months because I had already a decent sized network. Plus I was focussing on small investors, often REIN members. REIN members are not the easiest clients, because they want to write lots of offers, they know exactly what they want as learned from their books (including some incorrect procedures which you cannot correct if you use dynamite - well nearly), REIN members also are known to want to scrape the bottom of the barrel - how else do you find properties that meet the REIN criteria? Anyway it was fun and money came in to cover the expenses. But to really make a living, you have to sell a lot more than one condo per month. For me, after I learned what I wanted; after the liability when combining investing with realtorship increased even further due to the CB thing; and upon considering that I could make a lot more money elsewhere, I decided to move on. Numerous other Realtors are sticking it out and not necessarily for the money as you claim. They just love the entrepreneurship of their profession and many are just as enthusiastic about real estate as many REIN members.
The sad truth is also that if you want to really make a living as a Realtor, you have to sell at least seven average priced properties per month. So using the classic stats for selling that means, you need 5 new contacts to create one lead and you need 5 leads to sell one house. So to sell 7 houses per month you need to meet an enormous amount of people. No rooky Realtor has that many contacts right at the start. My mailing list was close to 300 friends and contacts not counting REIN. From that I got about 20 leads - enough people to sit down with and talk about real estate. It translated into 5 sales (the sixth I bought myself).
Another starting Realtor was a teacher who had traveled all his life around the world teaching English. Most time he spend in China and India. You would think that he had enough smarts and people skills to be successful as a Realtor. He was a very personable fellow and worked hard at being a Realtor for a year. His funds ran out and he had to quit without selling one house. Yes he wanted to make money (like anyone else), but that was definitely not the only reason he liked dealing with people but he had no large network in Calgary.
From my point of view, most Realtors who are succesfull are good guys who love what they are doing and to survive they must know what they are doing and be very active in their community. I have only the heighest admiration for them. Your Nemesis Brett, is a young engineer by training. He can make a lot more dough being an engineer than as a Realtor. He is an entrepreneur at heart and he works his tail off to make his dream come true. He has a lot more patience than me and he tried to answer many of your points - justified or not - in incredible detail. Hats off to him.
A good Realtor, listing and buying, offers value for their commissions. Yes, sophisticated investors may be able to represent themselves in the real estate market. But even for guys like me, I still like to use a Realtor because they save me time and thus money. There will be the occaisional deal that I may stumble on and do my self without a Realtor. But I am an investor and soon again a full time geologist (I have to do something to prevent getting bored) and the time that I save using a Realtor is worth a lot more than a bit of commission. There is only a very tiny proportion of the market that will really benefit from the new rules; there will also be a fair number of inexperienced real estate buyers and sellers who decide to go on their own. The latter will get hurt because of these new rules forced on by the CB. In my eyes the net gain for investors such as yourself who have the skills to do it on their own will cost those inexperienced real estate buyers a bundle - probably when they can least afford it.
Wow, a long epistle - I guess I need many words to say something that in my eyes is obvious.
Oops the stock market is up again - have to go make some real money
