Hi @Cameron Fowler, I would first ask if you have any sales skills. Have you made cold calls? Have you developed a database? If not I would suggest getting a W2 job and start house hacking your way into investments. You could either get a duplex or more and live in one unit and rent out the rest. This way you limit your housing expenses which can go towards down-payments on other investment homes. If you move a few times over the next few years, you can get up to 10 plus units in no time.
To answer your questions:
Q1: I was an agent and worked for a lender for a few years. Lending was much better, however it still was based on sales. Think about this, how many agents are in your local area and how many lenders are in the same area. Often times there are 10X agents in the same area. Now, how many transactions are there? Given there are less lenders with the same number of transactions, I would look at lending before getting into real estate as an agent. I am now an investor and sales is not even on my radar. Also, I would note - look at the transaction history and trend line. I would not get into the real estate industry as a whole right now as the transactions are falling off a cliff (this depends on your area of course, but look at 2019 TX and 2022 TX, are they up or down?).
Q2: Cold calling and setting appointments was an everyday activity. I had a list of phone numbers to call and worked my database. It was okay work, but I just didn't really like it. \
Q3: I have 3 degrees, 2 in economics and any degree will not hurt you, but most of real estate is about sales and pipeline growth.
You will learn the math portion, I would recommend learning cash on cash first and developing strategy around that. Something they do not touch very much in any business courses is that cash flow is the blood that flows through the business body. Without it, it will die.
Try listening to Dion Talk or Mike Zuber to get started on YouTube. They have slightly different stories and Zuber has millionaires on his channel every day.
Here is a video from Dion: www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0AjiR...
These are my opinions, I hope this helps! Good Luck!
