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Christian Swalm
  • Middletown, DE
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How I started in real estate

Christian Swalm
  • Middletown, DE
Posted Aug 12 2017, 09:40

I recently found BiggerPockets and I thought sharing my experience with real-estate so far would be beneficial to many of you here in the community.

When I was 17, I became the youngest person in the state of Delaware to pass the national and state real estate exams and when I was 21 I became a business owner for the first time.

I wanted to tell you these stories for one simple reason: I want to inspire young entrepreneurs that might be thinking they are too young to work on their dreams.

Growing up I always had an interest in real estate. In the summer after my junior year of high school, when I was 17 years old, I began taking real estate licensing courses. Only having a short window to complete these courses, I chose an accelerated program that covered the Law, Sales, and Math needed for the real estate exams. After passing these courses that summer, I was qualified to take my national and state real estate exams. I studied for a couple months and while I was still 17 I passed the national and state exams which qualified me for a real estate license. Unfortunately, In Delaware, you need to be a legal adult to officially receive your real estate license, so I had to wait until the end of the year to officially become a realtor. During school that year I wanted to continue my real estate career (even though it hadn’t legally started), so I spent some time looking for an opportunity to work in real estate. I mentioned this to my high school, and we came up with an “internship” program that allowed me to intern with one of the top real estate teams in my area for partial credit towards my education. During my internship, I learned an enormous amount of information and I realized very quickly that real estate is nothing like the classes I had taken. Through the work I was able to do, I gained an incredible perspective on the corporate side of real estate, how actual real estate transactions take place, and how various deals are structured.

If you fast forward 3 years, I am now 21 and I am part owner of my very own property management company, I have acquired my first investment property of which I am in the process of repairing, and I have helped sell a couple of houses. In the future, I hope to add other parts to my company and eventually include Realtor services, and various real estate investment opportunities

Through all of my hard work, I have now realized that it is never too early to start working to make your dreams a reality. I hope I can be an inspiration to young people that have ambitious goals and the desire to pursue your dreams. You may not know where your dreams will take you, but with hard work and time, you can achieve anything. I thought for most of my life that I wanted to be a real estate agent but ended up working in almost every other faction of the industry.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to my story. If you have any questions please reach out to me. I would love to help in any way that I can.

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