What is a Real Estate Agent?
A real estate agent is a professional who has a real estate license and helps people buy and sell homes. Depending on their area of expertise, real estate brokers can work with both residential and commercial properties. Agents can also specialize in a particular area of practice, such as a listing or buyer’s agent or a rental agent. Listing agents work with sellers to advertise a home, while buyers agents assist would-be homebuyers in their search for properties. This distinction between listing and buyer agents boils down to their primary clientele. On the other side, rental brokers assist prospective tenants in locating housing in a specific location.
How to Become a Real Estate Agent
- Look into your state’s minimum age and educational requirements.
- Enroll in a real estate education course that has been approved, either offline or online.
- Send in an application (together with the required documentation) to sit for the licensure exam.
- Get the required score on the real estate license exam for your state.
- Gain experience by working with a real estate broker who is licensed.
- To start working as an agent, submit an application for a license.
- Keep learning and renew your certificates as necessary.
How Do Real Estate Agents Earn Money?
Each time they successfully assist a client in buying or selling a home, real estate agents are paid a commission. Each broker and agent engaged in the transaction receives a commission, which is normally between four and six percent of the sale price of a certain property. Let’s imagine a house sells for $350,000 with a 6% commission. Each of the listing agent and broker would receive around 1.5 percent of the whole commission, or about $5,250. The broker and the buyer’s agent would both get paid equally. In order to maintain a steady flow of commission-based income, real estate brokers frequently work with numerous customers at once.