Different Types of Careers in Real Estate, Which Do I Pick?

Question

As I am coming into my senior year of college, I am wanting to pursue a career in Real Estate but I am not sure which area due to how many there are. I am Posting this for people of different areas to just talk about what you do in your area and what are the good and bads of each genre.

1.) What area of Real Estate are you in?

2.) What does an average day in your job/ shoes look like?

3.) Majoring in Mathematics, not Real Estate or business,  which area would you suggest I dive into?

Here are just a few simple questions that I like to ask people who I connect with in hopes to just get real everyday answers and not textbook answers. Feel free to reach out I would love to connect and just meet new people from every area.

Nathan Gesner · Answer

I'm in Property Management. It can be difficult, but it gets easier with experience and solid procedures in place. If you get a PM job, it will educate you quickly on how to manage rentals, and determine if you will like it or not. It also provides a stable W-2 job so you can qualify for loans. If you need work for a few years while you start your investment business, it's a good launching pad.

Cameron Fowler · Answer

Chris this was so helpful thank you for such a useful bit of insight.

Chris Webb · Answer

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!