RE License

[Kay Mays]

Hello,

I was wondering if any of the seasoned real estate investors here have a RE license. Are there more advantages to having one? Increased liability? I'm trying to figure out what would be the best way for me to learn how to spot a deal...

Thanks,

Kay

[J Scott]

Originally posted by Tim Franks:

Just DON'T Do It to save the commission when you sell your properties lol. You will spend a heap more time and money that that 3% will save you.

Personally, I disagree with this statement. If you'll be doing a lot of deals, having your license can save/earn you a good bit of money. I earned/saved over $68K last year. It cost me about $5K in fees and about 2 hours/week. That's about $600/hour if you calculate it out.

But, earning that money is not the biggest advantage -- in fact, it's not in the top two biggest advantages. The biggest advantage is getting control of my deals. By having my license, I can talk directly to buyers, sellers, agents, appraisers, inspectors, brokers, etc. I can also let myself into houses I want to see without having to schedule an appointment or wait for my agent to have time; these days, when deals are going under contract in hours, I don't have two days to wait to get inside a house to decide if I want to make my offer. And I'm certainly not going to ask another agent to show me comps that I have no intention of actually buying.

After a couple deals where you feel like you have no idea what's going on and you feel like everyone is screwing up your purchase/sale, you're going to wish you could pick up the phone and make things happen yourself, as opposed to just hoping your agent is taking care of it for you.

The second reason is access to data. If you have to trust someone else to tell you what your house is worth, you're basically trusting someone else to determine whether you succeed or fail in this business. Is there an agent who you trust that much? Not me. I want to find the comps myself and do my own CMAs. If I lose money on a deal, I want it to be my fault, not someone else's (not that I'd ever blame someone else for anything that goes wrong on one of my deals).

The third best reason is the money. Again, we earned/saved a lot of money last year having our own licenses. And that doesn't even count the extra money we made putting in offers for other investors and listing their houses. When other investors do a good job on their rehabs, listing for them can be pretty easy money (though my wife gets all the credit for being awesome at that part of the job, so it just seems like easy money to me :).