 I've got a presentation put together today, but you're certainly welcome to ask questions. Gonna go over a little bit about what real estate actually is, what skills you need to do it, what the job is actually like, both selling and appraising more selling since that's what more people are interested in. And then I will also give you all the information for how to get your license, what it costs, things like that. At the end, I have a bunch of links to the associations and the places to get the information about the license and all that. And I will be sharing my PowerPoint with the library so they can send it all off to you so you will have all those links, okay? Go ahead and feel free to put questions in chat. I'll try to get to them. Some of the library staff may help me take a look at them also, but and sometimes I may not get to them right away. I may wait until I'm at a point where the question makes sense with the presentation, all right? So let's start off here. As Lea mentioned, I am a realtor. I'm a certified residential real property appraiser, which means I'm an appraiser. There are four different license levels. I'm the third a license level. I do residential property, the only license level higher than that is commercial appraiser and I don't do commercial stuff. And I am an instructor. I've been teaching classes for years because for both those licenses, you need education every year, every licensing cycle to keep up your license. The same thing is true for your hairdresser and all kinds of other careers. And so I teach a lot of those classes. And for some reason I became a measuring expert. One of the classes I teach is how to measure a home. Realtors need to know how big the house is when they put it in MLS. As an appraiser, I have to measure every house. I have to put a sketch of every house and every appraisal. And so I do hundreds of them every year and most realtors don't sell 100 houses a year. But I definitely appraise over 100 houses a year. I used to when I was doing more appraisals. So I started teaching realtors how to measure and now I measure houses for a living. It's kind of fun and stress free. So I have a variety of experience throughout the business. One thing I wanna point out first, if you'll notice realtors are registered trademark. It's actually a trade association. You can be a real estate agent and not be a realtor but once you belong to the National Association of Realtors you become a realtor. And that's why it's printed that way with a capital letter. They printed it on caps with a registered trademark. And it's just a two-syllable word. It's just realtor. All right. So why is there so much interest in real estate? Right now, partly it's the economic shakeup. Whenever the economy starts getting in flux and people are losing the jobs and they're starting to realize they don't like their job and things like that, a lot of people look to real estate. It always looks like a glamorous, easy job. It looks like you have tons of freedom. It looks like you can make a ton of money and it's definitely something that people are drawn to. Back in 2006 or so, people were joining like crazy again. Okay. People were taking classes and signing up and becoming realtors fast and furious back then when the pricing half houses was going up again. And then after the market crash tons of people just dropped out. A lot of appraisers dropped out. We'd lost about a third of the appraisers after the housing crash. Partly because of the crash and partly because the backlash of new laws and regulations that came in. Most appraisers are pretty old and they just said, forget it, we're getting out of the business. So real estate definitely fluctuates a lot with the economy. Partly because it's easy to get into and it's easy to get out of and you can do it part-time. Plus it always sounds like a good job and it hits the news. So if anybody's unsatisfied with their current job especially people who don't feel safe in their jobs right now because of the pandemic you have much more control in real estate. Yeah, you're still gonna see people and you're gonna go into other people's houses but it's not eight hours a day standing on your feet with customers constantly coming up to your window and getting food from you. So a lot of people are getting into it again right now. And whenever something's in the news it gets a lot of more attention. And real estate's been in the news a lot in the last couple of years. Definitely right now with the crazy rate the prices are going up. There is a housing shortage in different markets around the country but most markets around the country there are very few homes compared to how many people want a home from the Cato Institute in California. California, first of all prices are crazy. California has a median sale price 2.5 times higher than the national average. 2.5 times higher than national average just below 1 million in the San Francisco Bay Area. So that's single family homes so that includes the condos and town homes and stuff like that. But in comparison to that $1 million price range almost 58% of counties nationwide have a median home price of less than $150,000. So go from a million to more than half the country the median price is $150,000. So it's a crazy swing but the reason California is so high is the housing shortage. California has fewer housing units per capita than any other state except for Utah as of January, 2021. Estimates are that between 1 million to 3.5 million units short. So people are willing to pay anything. In the town I live in, I live in a little community and I was on a phone call, a Zoom call with city council. And there was somebody on that call who wanted to live in our town and there was literally only one house for sale at that moment. And he was asking if he could buy commercial property and turn it into residential property right on Main Street. And because commercial property is vacant right now a lot of it's vacant. There are a lot of stores that are open a lot of restaurants that are opened our movie theater closed. And he wants to change that into residential. That's how desperate he is to live in our town and how desperate he is to find a property. Right now houses are going up on the market. Most realtors will put a house in the market these days, Friday afternoon. They will allow showings all day Saturday and Sunday in 15 minute increments and people are just going through the house like crazy. And then they take all the offers by Monday at noon or Monday, 5 p.m. And they'll be sifting through 28 offers, 40 offers. And some of them are $50,000, $350,000 above the listing price. And people are crazy about it. They are foregoing any inspections on the home. Usually when you buy a house you have an inspector come through and take a look at it and make sure the foundation's okay the furnace is working and they're foregoing all that. Cash is king right now because most of these houses will not appraise for the values that they're offering on them. And so they won't be able to get a loan. So people are coming in with cash offers. Now, of course, there are a lot of people in the world that have plenty of money to just throw down cash on a house. But other people are taking out a mortgage on their current home or taking out money from their retirement funds buying the house with cash. And then as soon as they move in they refinance it, get a mortgage and put the money back where it went. But cash is the only way they can get houses. So since real estate's in the news people are asking about getting into the business and because with COVID-19 so many people were so devastated by the economy but realtors are making a killing. They are not all of them, of course but a lot of them are making just a ton of money during all this. Plus public perception is always that realtors are rich. Most realtors are not rich. Most realtors are part-time most realtors don't work I was gonna say don't work that hard but there's a wide variety of what people make but I'm just gonna check some messages here see if there's any questions. So sometimes if you see my mouse moving around I'm just moving some menus out of the way and things like that. All right, there's one question that comes in here asking me to be look at my crystal ball. What do you see as a future of housing in the Bay? Do you think it will shift to more large multifamily? It's always difficult to tell where things are gonna go but nationwide over the last several years houses have gotten smaller and smaller and smaller and they've started to get bigger again. Right now a lot of the reason that people are moving is because they suddenly need a house that has office space for one or two adults. They suddenly needed a space that has a school room space for the kids and more and more people are going private, right? They're gonna have everything there. More of the big houses people are buying they're moving out of their small houses moving into the big houses and so many of these big houses now have full gyms and sport courts with two-story high ceilings where they can play basketball and hockey and everything else in there so they don't have to go to a gym anymore. Then part of the reason that people are very interested in real estate is the HGTV syndrome. That's what I call it. HGTV has so many shows about real estate and they all make it look so easy. Let's show somebody these four houses and they'll instantly buy one and everything's perfect. Well, they've already seen those houses they already offered one they already moved all their stuff in that's already their house by the time you see the show. And so much of the information on those shows is entertainment and not real life. Okay, you bought a house for $600,000 and you put in $20,000 and you got a whole new kitchen and a new doorway and a new roof and remodeled the entire thing for $20,000 and now you're gonna sell it for a $300,000 profit. No, you're not. So a lot of people's there are a lot of industries where the general public thinks they know more than the professionals about it and real estate is definitely one of them because of HGTV. And so that can be a frustrating part of it but it also gets more and more people interested in real estate. They see it, they think they know everything and they try to get into the business. So that's part of the reason that there's a lot of activity right now as far as people trying to get into the business. It doesn't mean you shouldn't. Oh, and one of the reason also is it's very easy to get in. Realtors are independent contractors you have your own business and usually if you're gonna start your own business you need to buy a whole bunch of inventory and get a retail shop and set a million things up. In real estate, you don't. You take a test, you pass it, you're in. Doesn't take much to get in. Maybe get some business cards. You don't even really need those these days. You got a smartphone, you're done. So it's a very easy industry to get into very inexpensive to have your own business to get into it. So that's why a lot of people are in it part-time because why not? All right. By the way, I was talking about increasing values. Notice these values here in the San Francisco Bay area. In last month, the average price is 1.51 million. Now it's 1.225. One month later. Prices are going nuts. And this is what it was a year ago. Just over 1 million, now it's 1.25. So prices are going up crazy. This is the year to year change. So here's almost a 24% change there. Los Angeles 22% change, Central Coast 26% change. I mean, the prices are nuts. And again, that's part of the reason it hits the news. All right, so if you're thinking about getting into real estate, is it gonna be your business or is it gonna be your hobby? Whether it's a business or a hobby, you need to treat it the same way. You need to treat it like a business for a couple of reasons. Partly because real estate is guided by a lot of federal laws, of a lot of federal regulations. So you have some liability, quite a bit of liability regarding discrimination as well as a lot of other things. We all carry insurance for it. So even if you wanna get into real estate to sell a couple of houses here and there, you still need to make sure that you treat it like a business. One of those ways is to talk to your financial planner, talk to your tax accountant and figure out how you're gonna handle your money. As I mentioned, you are gonna be an independent contractor. There are almost no employees in real estate. Most, everybody has to work under a broker. You become a real estate agent, you become a realtor and you have to work under a broker. Now, a broker could be a huge company with offices everywhere, national offices and employ millions or have millions of independent contractors under them. Or it could be one person that you know nearby who got their broker's license and they're gonna hold your license for you. So it could be a small company or a big company, but most realtors are not employees. Okay, we'll keep going. So make sure you talk to your financial planner because you are not going to be receiving a W-2 anymore. You need to set up a business for yourself to make sure that your taxes are taken care of to make sure that you're handling your money correctly. Get a separate bank account for your business. Again, you're not gonna be getting a W-2. So this is not just income, this is business income. It's separate and it doesn't cost much to get a separate bank account. Plenty easy to do, set it up separately. You don't have to come up with a company name, but you can check with the local commerce department to find out what names are taken, but get yourself a separate bank account. All your money goes into there so it doesn't get commingled with your personal funds that are coming from other jobs or from the family. Also, if you are not getting a W-2, nobody's taking taxes out of your paychecks. You need to start handling your taxes. You need to start putting money aside. Most realtors pay quarterly taxes. So you need to be prepared for that. So what a lot of people do is take every paycheck, every time you get a commission check, they take every check and take a chunk of it out and put it in a separate account to be ready to go. I have money every month just out of my bank account just automatically transferred over to a savings account so it's in there ready to go. I was on a Facebook page today and one person said she puts 40% of every single commission check in a separate account. And then she's got it ready there for her taxes, for any surprise expenses and for savings. So you need to start being responsible for that. Keep in mind that you are now running a business. It's not just going to work and coming home when your boss is taking care of other things. You need to think about a budget also. When you run your own business, everything that you spend needs to be kept track of. You need to figure out how much money you're actually making. Make sure that the job is worth it to you, that you're gonna make enough money. You do need to spend some money on advertising. That varies greatly. Certain things are tax deductible, that is not in my department. I talked to your tax accountant about what's tax deductible and what's not. But you need to start thinking about a budget, making sure that you're not wasting money and coming out with no actual profit at the end. So start thinking about that. Start thinking about where you can spend money, where you can save money and what you're actually gonna have to spend on it. And we'll talk a little bit about some of the things that do cost you money in here. By the way, part of why you get a separate bank account is so you have a separate corporate credit card. I have a corporate credit card and everything from my business goes on that credit card. So at the end of the year, I don't even have to think about where I spent money or what it was for, it's all for my business. So it makes it super easy for there. Get a professional email address. Please don't use your hot chick 94 at gmail.com for your business. Get a special email address for it. They're cheap, they're free. If you're gonna use Gmail, it's very cheap to get one with your own name on it. I've got several professional emails. One of them is just my name. And that is not a bad idea to get one that is gonna be permanent. Some people are still using AOL email addresses, which make them look kind of funny and unprofessional. But if you've ever changed your email address, you know that it's hard to get everybody to follow you because their computer is still autofill the one from years ago. And it's very hard to get people transferred over. A lot of realtors, every real estate company, if you, when you work under a broker, we'll hand you an email address, okay? It's usually your name at their company.com. The problem is most realtors go to at least three companies during their lifetime. They switch brokerages. And if you are at abcreality.com for years and you wanna switch to XYZ realty, a ton of your people are never gonna get the news. They're never gonna update their email contact list. And they're always gonna be emailing it's the wrong email and you're gonna lose a bunch of people. So set yourself up with your own email address that you will never lose people through and make it a professional one. Make it, you know, responsible name. Also change the greeting on your phone or get a second line. A lot of, you can set yourself up to get to have two different phone numbers coming into it so you know how to answer it when it comes in and so you can have a second greeting on that. But make it professional. That way if you answered at 10 o'clock at night then you know how to answer the phone. And here's the thing about business or hobby, full-time versus part-time. A lot of the full-time realtors try to shame the people who are in it part-time. That's not necessary. You can be part-time and still be a really good realtor. You just need to make sure that you stay up to date on everything. One of the great things about this business is that you can do it until the day you die. Because you don't have to show up every day. You can decide how often you work, how little you work, how much you work. I had a realtor friend that I've known forever. He died about a year and a half ago. He was 82, he was still working. I helped him with a lot of things at that point. He wasn't so great at technology so I would help him do a lot of the technology stuff. He was pretty darn good at it but I would still help him with things and he was getting hard to move around a little bit so two-story homes were tough for him. So full-time or part-time, you can do the job well but just make sure you do not fall out of being in touch with what's happening in the business because rules change, laws change, traditions change, the market fluctuates, just keep yourself informed and that's easy enough to do. There are a lot of Facebook pages, four realtors, four appraisers and they're fascinating and incredibly educational to hear about what other people are doing, how people are filling out purchase agreements, what new laws came about. Your broker should keep you in touch also. Most brokers have weekly meetings, they're all done on Zoom now that will let you know about law changes so you can still be a part-time realtor and be good. As I was mentioning, my friend who died recently at 82, he was still in the business and he was still doing a good job. He only sold a couple of homes a year but still a couple homes a year, a couple thousand dollars not a bad part-time job well into your retirement age. A lot of other people who are retired and wanna keep working cashier at a store and that's hard and you don't have any freedom. So it's an excellent business for the long-term. Also, you can get referral business in real estate. So if I have someone come to me and they say, hey, we wanna use you as a realtor but we live 100 miles away and say, well, I'm not gonna be your realtor because I wouldn't be able to represent you well but I know Bob, he works in your area, he'll take good care of you. I call up Bob, I say, Bob, you can have these people if you give me 20%, 25% of your commission. Boom, I make 20, 25% for a phone call, Bob's happy to get the business, my people are taking care of, it's all good. There are people who later in their lives or at a different time in their life they got stuff going on, they still have contacts, they still have a database, they still have people calling them but they aren't able to do the work right then, they refer it out and they still get paychecks for handing off business to other people. So it's a great business, even if you're part-time. All right, just make sure that you stay up to date on everything. Okay, so one of the things you have to decide when you get into the business is where are you gonna hold your license? Which broker are you gonna choose? There are a lot of things to consider here, I can't tell you everything and I can't tell you exactly how every broker works but there are brokers who will split a commission with you where you get a certain commission, they take a certain percentage of it, that's how most brokers work. Some brokers will take a huge percent of it, some brokers will take up to 50% of each one of your commissions, other brokers will take a lot less. What most of them do is take a big percent at the beginning of every year and say they'll start at like 50% in January and by the time you make enough commissions that they've got $30,000 out of your commissions then you can get 90% of your commission. Okay, so they're all different and when you go sit down with a broker you need to take notes and then you're gonna have to work out some math because it's hard to keep track of exactly how much money you're gonna make but in a company like that that switches over at the beginning of every year you gotta make a lot of sales at the beginning of the year to make sure that you're gonna get enough commissions at the end of the year. And if you're not gonna do a whole lot of transactions every year and a lot of people don't that's not the kind of broker to go with because then you will never get above getting 50%. We used to have and they're not very common anymore desk fees where I worked for a company for a while where I got 100% of my commission but I paid a monthly rental for my desk. Well now most offices don't even have desks anymore most offices don't even exist so that doesn't really exist anymore but at least I had a budget then where it was my monthly fee and knew exactly how much it was so regardless of what I sold. So if I sold a lot that year, I made much more profit if I didn't sell very much, well at least I had a budget and I knew exactly how much I had to pay every year and I didn't end up losing more commissions. Most brokers have transaction fees and that is a certain amount of money that comes off of each transaction that you do. So it's usually off of each side. So if I represent a seller and I have a transaction fee I pay this $400 to my broker every time I work with the seller. If I have a seller and a buyer on the same house I'll pay that $400 twice once for the buyer and once for the seller because that's two different sides. But check with brokers and see if they have transaction fees. Those are nice little things because again it's a budgetable you can figure it out how many sides you're gonna do and how much it's gonna cost you and it's not based on commissions not based on percentages it's a more regulated fee so it's easy to figure it out there. Some brokers will let you charge as a client that and some you have to pay it. Also check with your brokers real estate is a kind of a crazy business where once you get your license, go sell a house. There's no regulations on how you could go out the day you get your license and sell a $3 million house and without any real life training because the licensing training is how to get your license. The courses that you take are about laws and about definitions and about ethics and things like that but none of it teaches you how to use any computers none of it teaches you how to deal with your clients none of it teaches you how to advertise none of it teaches you how to open a block box to get into the house. Those are things that you need to learn on the job but a lot of brokers do have fantastic training to help the new agents get up and going. Now they will take more of your money upfront but it's just paying for training. So check with your broker especially if you're new do they have training, do they have mentors do they have classes? I teach a lot of classes for some of these brokers where I go in to their meetings and give them an hour class about this an hour class about that. A lot of them require them to go to our association where they can get certain classes that they have to take but check with your broker about that some brokers are great on support and other ones are not great on support. My current broker is a smaller brokerage lease expired on the building about two years ago and so he just gave up the building doesn't need it anymore but I switched over to him from my other broker where I was paying a desk fee I started out at one of the big companies that you pay a lot of you pay half your commission and they give you lots of really formal training and they were a big company with a well-known name and I got a lot of business just for being with them then I switched to the other company where I was more on my own and I paid my desk fee and so I had that budgeted out and I had an office there and I went to work every day and then for the last I don't know how many years I've been with a smaller broker that doesn't even have weekly meetings like the other ones doesn't get in your business doesn't deal with you much but you have to have a certain amount of experience before you come work with him and he's much more hands off. So there's lots of different options there he's got no training, nothing like that if I have a question I can call him he's still my broker he's still the one that is responsible for me in the end but I get more money for each deal because he doesn't have to provide those things for me and now that he's not even providing an office he actually dropped our rates. I pay him just a monthly fee which is very low honestly it's on auto pay I don't know what it is right now it's crazy low it's like a hundred bucks or something he dropped that when he got rid of the office and then I pay a transaction fee every time I do a deal so that works for me because I don't sell a million houses anymore because I do so many other things. So talk to the brokers and figure out that there's lots of different options out there and figure out what's gonna work best for you when you're new you're probably gonna wanna go with one of those bigger names that offer you a lot of training, offer you mentors maybe even have an office that you can still go into so you can casually ask people questions it does help to have other agents around to talk to but I highly recommend getting on some of the Facebook pages also even if you never ask a question just read every day and you'll learn so much. Then you could also think about are you an independent kind of person or do you wanna work on a team? Most realtors are independent realtors they show up they do all their own stuff they take care of everything some of the offices will enter your listing when you get a house that you wanna sell they will enter it into the computer system into MLS the multiple listing system for you but other than that they do everything on themselves they advertise, they buy all their supplies on their own they work on their own they don't have anybody else helping them that's how most agents work and I think a lot of people get into the business because they like that they're tired of being bossed around they're tired of having to depend on other people I know years ago I worked for a hotel chain and part of me loved it it was so much fun it was fresh out of college so were a lot of the other people there it was lively it was active but man the day I quit my job where it depended on whether or not other people showed up for work who that was a happy day when I didn't have to worry about who was gonna show up I worked in a lot of my employees were from a not so nice area and more than once the police would show up and try to arrest people, my staff while I was working and that was just nerve wracking to not know how your day was gonna be the next day cause you didn't know who was gonna show up for work so being independent, a lot of people love it there are other people where that's not your personality type or you don't want to be responsible for absolutely everything there are real estate teams out there and sometimes it's two different realtors who work well together and just decided to team up so that somebody could cover for you on a Sunday if you want to take the day off there are a lot of family teams I do a lot of work for I've known the mother forever she's been in real estate forever she was an airplane pilot but at 9-11 she gave up flying and got into real estate and then her daughter joined her recently and her daughter is fantastic her mother knows more about real estate the daughter knows about social media marketing and they have just blossomed in this huge business and then the cousin, the nephew so the mother's brother's son now joined them also and so a lot of times it's family teams that get together so if you have a family member in real estate or a family member that might want to get into it that's something worth thinking about and teams can be two people or they can be an entire office of 12 people there are some realtors who their name is like the banner name and then they have buyer's agents that they go out and meet with the buyers and drive them around to the different houses or go meet them at the houses they have a marketing person they have a social media person they have the office administrator that does all the computer work for them they have what's very common is a transaction coordinator very often realtors get into the business it's too much for them and they end up becoming transaction coordinators this is somebody who is really well organized and likes serving people and they say, okay, we got your house sold we need these eight pieces of paper from you we need these things signed I need to get this off to the loan officer I need to get this off to the inspector I need to get this off to the appraiser I need to get this off to the homeowners association and they organize all that paperwork as a realtor when you sell a property your evening is shot your next day is shot because suddenly you have to get all this information out to a million different people and start coordinating things and if you can hand that off to somebody else who's got a system and got a checklist and loves that kind of detail it can free you up to go get the next bit of business realtors have to be salespeople and the less time they spend doing other business the more they can sell that's one of the reasons I measure houses for realtors it's something they should do they don't really know how but it's something that takes time and they're better off not figuring that out and worrying about that and trying to get good at it when they should be out selling houses so you can be on a team that is 20 people strong with lots of different realtors and lots of different positions like a regular business or you can be with just one or two other people figure out what works for you figure out what works in your personality and you will probably change over the time that you're working I have worked with other agents where we're not officially a team but a friend of mine that we became friends she's another realtor we've rehabbed homes together and things like that when she's out of the country I cover for her when I'm on vacation she covers for me and we can help each other out it's nothing official but we figure out payment back and forth and it works out great you also need to think about your boundaries there are a lot of agents who get completely burned out it's an industry where there's a high amount of divorce because the business takes 24 hours a day there's no such thing as bankers hours for realtors your clients are the general public they're not other businesses your clients want you available at all times and they will call you at all times I had a client that used to text me at 4 a.m. all the time now, not too bad since pre-pandemic I was usually up by 4.15 but still I didn't wanna do a business 15 minutes before my alarm clock was going off and then when I was on vacation it was going off at 2 a.m. instead of 4 a.m. that was really bad I just switched her to whenever she calls or texts it doesn't make us out she didn't want answers right then she was just up and wanting to put her thoughts on paper to make sure she had all the questions asked I know an agent, he's a very organized person he actually when he got in the business he hired me to work with him and I taught him everything I would go to all his appointments with him I taught him all the computer business all the computer programs he needed he's a very detailed organized discipline person and on his voicemail it tells you what hours he will accept phone calls and what hours he is not available he's got kids and he wants to have a life and so he doesn't accept phone calls on Sundays he won't answer text messages on Sundays and I think it's 7 p.m. is his limit some agents say you have to be available to all times other agents manage to have a life as long as they set expectations for their clients so be strong, figure out what works for you if you're a high energy agent you love the activity and you wanna hear from somebody at midnight that's fine but take care of yourself make sure that if you were not that kind of person that you figure out how to turn your phone off you figure out how to set expectations without getting mad at your clients and figure it out there when I used to work for an employer is it cranky if I was asked to work overtime it's like oh you're making me work I don't wanna work I got other things to do when it's you doing it and you're working overtime and you make more money because you're working overtime it's easier to work overtime and you're happier to do it when I'm appraising I will often work until one or two in the morning cause I get engrossed in the project that I'm working on excuse me and I enjoy it so much that the time flies by and I don't mind it at all so you may not mind being super busy maybe you're working a regular nine to five job right now and if you get into real estate you're working to midnight and you're totally fine with that if you're loving what you're doing go with it realize that you are in control and you can run the business any way that you want so talking about some of the good stuff and some of the bad stuff as I mentioned the general public kind of thinks real estate is all just glamour and fun and driving around and seeing pretty houses and believe me part of it is that I get to see some fantastic properties so much fun I love going off to see the houses I like being the tour guide when I'm working with buyers going out and showing them things and talking to them about it my specialty is first-time home buyers and part of that is because I like to teach people things excuse me so I like talking to them about the entire process and working them through it and explaining things to them and going to a house and telling them why this is here and what that pipe is for and why the smoke detector isn't attached and things like that I enjoy that going out and looking at the houses is the fun part when I first got into the business and I got away from being locked in a building all day it was fantastic to be part of your job getting a car and drive around and meet people and see fun houses so if you're tired of being locked up excuse me it can definitely be fun you do see some horrifying creepy disgusting places also depends on what price range you're in and things like that so you don't always get to see just mansions I have certainly been in some disgusting, nasty houses yeah so I was prepared for the pandemic because I already owned plastic gloves and I already owned shoe covers and I already carried sanitizer solution and hand wipes in my car kind of shocking how many people have never cleaned a light switch in their house you go in, you turn on the light and you're like oh I don't want to touch my hand to anything again so and as I mentioned part of the good part is that you run your own business you get to make your decisions you get to decide am I going to sell 20 houses this year am I just going to sell five do I want to grow my business so I sell 40 houses a year or am I going to stick into five do I want to work mostly with buyers the day when I work mostly with sellers do I want to work only in this one neighborhood do I want to work all over this huge area and drive an hour for my clients every day it is totally up to you within ethical guidelines and things like that how you run your business by the way I mentioned the ethical guidelines because one of the ethics that you have to agree to is that you will not accept a job for an area or a kind of property that you don't know how to do okay so if you're selling residential real estate and somebody asks you to sell their restaurant you probably shouldn't do it you can always team up with another realtor who knows how to do it and you can learn it right you have to be able to expand what you know how to do but you have to do that by getting somebody else to teach you it or admit it to your client and figure out how to learn it before you sell the property but you get to decide because it's your own business you get to make the decision so that's a fantastic thing you can take unlimited vacation time there are a lot of people who disappear for a solid month every year some disappear for two months every year some people disappear for three months every year you can you don't have to fight with the boss about I only get two weeks of vacation that's crazy you can go on vacation anytime you want and I've been in business long enough that it was pre-sale phone so it was much harder to go on vacation before the sale phone earlier on with one of my first cell phones I was doing mostly appraising then just selling a couple houses a year and this is when I got appraisals through faxes so if I left home it would be really hard to get my orders from my clients well I had an apprentice under me and I had all my faxes come through my cell phone I didn't know the cell phone could do this except for one day I checked my message and it said you had three messages and a fax I was like how do I have a fax on my phone? that you can get at the time I don't know if you still can at the time I could get faxes on my phone it would tell me I had a fax and it said what number would you like to transfer it to and I just go down to the hotel on vacation and go to the front desk and say I got a fax can I send it to you and they print it out and charge me for it and then I would call my apprentice at home and say hey got an order for you can you do this so I could be out of town and my clients never knew because of my cell phone and then it's still the case but even back when it orders obviously you can't show houses when you're out of town but you can still do a lot of business everything is done remotely even pre COVID you can do all your paperwork and everything remotely so you can go on vacation and even I don't tend to take a whole lot of big vacations I don't disappear for a month I haven't been to Europe in years but I go on those daily vacations if you'll notice my backdrop is kayaking on a lake if I don't have any appointments and tomorrow's gonna be 80 degrees and sunny I might just disappear to the lake for the day and at some point I will pull over for lunch and check my messages and my clients still think I'm working I'm still checking my messages so I don't go on those big vacations where I take huge chunks of times but I take hours on certain days I take a whole day if it's fantastic I disappear for an hour with my dogs every afternoon during work hours because they need a walk and I don't have a boss telling me I can't do it so it can be very very flexible people with kids you can go to every event you can volunteer at school you can be home if they're sick you can make it work for you now the people who don't do a good job making it work for you because most clients wanna see houses at night they can still schedule it and make it work for them but sometimes they just get overwhelmed and say yes to every single client so make sure you aren't one of those people but you can determine your own schedule and you can make a ton of money there are plenty of agents who make over a million dollars a year no problem, well not no problem they're working hard but you have to work to do it you have to make sure you're organized to do it but it is definitely a business where it is unlimited if your clientele is all people who are buying small houses for not much money you're gonna work a lot harder for your money than somebody who's all your clientele is a couple of million dollars because you are getting paid on a percentage basis but you can determine that as I mentioned the flexible hours in appraising when I was doing mostly appraising every day I basically worked on a split schedule I would go off and do all my appointments in the morning and then the afternoon I would have it free I would go out for lunch with friends I would walk the dogs and enjoy the sunshine and then at about 6 p.m. I'd be back up on computer till about midnight and that was the schedule that worked for me so you make it work for you you're not tied to a desk like I mentioned before to be able to get out and see the daylight and see the sunshine and not have to be locked up is fantastic you get to pick your clients if there's somebody you don't get along with fire them, don't work with them you don't have a boss telling you you have to if somebody is creepy don't work with them if somebody is annoying and too demanding refer to somebody else and take part of the commission and don't work with them and you do get to meet some fantastic people I have a lot of friends that I met because I sold to a house and it can be a lot of fun and especially because you're working with big decisions with them so you get to know them pretty well oh and here's some of the bad stuff it's a job like any other job there's crap that you got to do that you don't want to do that's not the fun part and you got to get it done and it interferes and sometimes you got to stay up late so it is a job and you've got to treat it like a job again, there are federal guidelines and regulations that are guiding you and people do sue realtors and appraisers sometimes so you have to treat it professionally also the good part is you run your own business the bad part is you run your own business you are the advertising department you are the accountant you are the accounts receivable you are the scheduling or everything unless you're working on those big teams but you need to know more you need to pay attention to more you're not going to spend all your time selling and even though you can take a limited vacation time none of them are paid you're not getting a paycheck coming in while you're gone you're not being paid for those days off right, if I take time off I'm well aware that I'm not earning something that day so think about that you also don't get benefits, right there's no health insurance through the National Association of Realtors you can get some but you don't get any of the regular benefits no 401K is set up for you, nothing like that you're not working for a big company and as I said you must be selling every day real estate is a sales job it's a person to person sales job not person to business so you're not knocking on business doors and trying to meet with the marketing manager every day but you need to let people know that you're in real estate some people do it annoyingly and bug all their friends other people don't but every time you sell a house you lost a client they're probably not gonna buy another one for at least a couple of years so you need to get new clients all the time so you're trying to service the clients you've got and trying to get their contracts and everything else but you just gotta make sure you have other ones in your pipeline so if you hate selling not the job for you there's a lot of competition out there everybody you know probably knows a realtor there's over 4,000 agents in San Francisco alone okay so there are a lot of realtors out there now most of those agents are probably not selling a whole lot of houses every year but still everybody knows somebody so you've got some competition as I said you have to follow the law there are real consequences if you do not oh there's by no benefits and no health insurance and by the way you may meet some good people some people are freaking crazy residential real estate is an emotional business commercial not so much commercial real estate if you're gonna sell that and I don't sell commercial real estate but people are there to make the money they're running the numbers make sure they can make a profit off of it when people buy or sell their house it's an emotional purchase I don't know if any of you have bought or sold recently but when I'm working with sellers and they're ready to sell their house and I tell them they should get rid of their family photos and they should by the way the house smells bad because of the pets and we need to paint the color here you gotta say it really nice because they love their house they painted it that weird mustard color because they think it's beautiful they don't smell their pets and they want Bozo to be there to meet the clients you have to tread lightly they love their house they think it's better than anybody else's house in the neighborhood even though the one down the street is twice the size and updated and totally new kitchen but they think theirs is worth more because they love it you will also find that people walk into a house and they make their decision as soon as they walk in the front door they don't have to see the whole house they know if it's their house or not there's a phrase in real estate called buyers or liars and they don't mean to be they think they know what they want but emotion takes over and a couple of years ago they didn't give me much information as far as what they wanted they asked to see one house in particular and I think that was listed for like 980 so I knew that was a price range but they wouldn't commit to a price range they did tell me two towns on opposite sides of the metro area that they wanted to look at other than that nothing oh nice woodwork and a yard big enough for a pool it's hard to look up nice woodwork in MLS because there's no button that says three bedrooms, nice woodwork I showed them some properties and then in the other second neighborhood the second day I was showing them properties there were very few properties to show there just wasn't much for sale this was several years ago and I showed them a one story house based on the they did tell me how big their previous house had been they hadn't told me if they wanted it bigger or smaller but because this was a one story it was definitely smaller than our older house it had a pretty small yard not big enough for a swimming pool it did have nice woodwork but I said hey there's not a whole lot of houses to show but let's go see this when it's brand new it's a builder model let's go see it walk in the front door totally in love I'm like seriously this is not what you told me what you know why they fell in love with it it was a builder model the builder staged it with really nice furniture the house was I can't remember I think it was right under a million dollars the builder had used the same living room furniture the same dining room furniture that they had in their current home so they walked in and felt like home that's why they bought the property we closed in a week I got a huge paycheck two days before Christmas two days of showing them properties people are crazy sometimes crazy in a good way sometimes crazy in a bad way all right so here's some of the necessary skills that you have to have in order to do this you have to have some patience people make decisions on their own timeline they do think they know everything because of HGTV you have to explain to them the truth you have to understand that this is an emotional purchase for them they may tell you what they want in the house and then they don't like it in the houses you show them just like that because they don't really know what they like until they see it they don't know what they're doing for the most part most people don't buy houses that often so you do have to have some patience and explain the process to them and you have to walk them through it you have to be able to do sales you have to have flexibility you have to be able to change up what you're doing that day if somebody suddenly needs you because the house hit in the market at 4 p.m. today and it's gonna have offers on it by 5 p.m. you have to be able to figure out plans of okay by buyer says they can only afford this much and wants a house in this neighborhood but that's not gonna happen so let me think about how I can help them get something else either flexibility in figuring out how to get them better financing or flexibility how to figure out how to get them some gift money or some grants or a different neighborhood that's gonna meet their needs that they haven't even heard about so you have to be able not every project is the same you have to be trustworthy you have fiduciary responsibility to your clients you are handling their money you are handling the biggest purchase of their lives you are signing legal contracts not only are you explaining contracts to your client and asking them to sign them you're signing them also so you need to be completely trustworthy completely ethical completely willing to find out the answer if you don't know the answer to make sure that you're giving the right answers to your clients and when you're new there are gonna be all kinds of times you're not gonna know the answer figure out a way to tell your clients I'll get back to you on that and go find the right answer you have to be trustworthy you have to have people willing to trust you when they're spending that kind of money you have to be an educator as I said most people don't sell homes very often they don't buy homes very often you have to tell them the process I've had clients that come to me with stuff and they ask me to do things that I just look at I'm like last time they sold a home was 30 years ago things were different back then so you have to teach them about it as I mentioned you have to be ethical and as funny out of what a Facebook page or what a little while ago popped up a question from realtors across the country what do you wish you knew before you got into this business and the most common answers that came back I wish I knew I was gonna be a marriage counselor I wish I knew I was gonna be a family therapist because most people who buy a house are not single there are single people who buy houses but most people they're part of a family one way or another whether it's a couple or somebody and kids and everybody has to agree and by the way some of the worst things are when you have a young couple go look at houses with you forever and they finally found one and then they say dad wants to see the house the deal's shot if dad shows up to see the house he's just gonna have to find problems with it so you have to work with them how to handle their family how to figure out what their wants are versus their needs in you have to deal with all their personality types in there so that goes back to patients also but yeah you have to work a whole family sometimes you also have to have some good tech skills I've been working with an agent for over a year now she thinks she knew real estate before because her family owned a lot of commercial properties I don't know how old she is I'm blaming it on her age it's not fair I suppose some of the technology doesn't compute with her some of it she's great at other parts of it does not compute MLS is your multiple listing service that is a computer website that you are going to go to all day every day and that's where you look up houses and that's where you figure out the price for the house that you're gonna list tonight and that's where you look at all the pictures and figure out which ones you're gonna take your clients to you spend your life on MLS you have to enter listings into there you have to know how to use it you have to know how to do searches you have to know how to run statistics off of it there's separate statistical programs that you know how to know how to use and of course you will have an app for that on your phone also even lockboxes run from an app from your phone so if you wanna open a lockbox on a house have to have the app on your phone showing time is the service there are a few of them but showing time is for the area when you set up your appointments you don't call another agent say hey can I show your house at noon no you go online and you set up the appointments online you have to click the right buttons you have to know how to do it you've got an app for that when you're working with sellers you have to teach your sellers how to use it cause they're gonna get text messages or they can go to the app to accept an appointment or decline an appointment so you have to be able to work with your sellers and teach them a little bit about how it's gonna work RPR that just stands for Realtors Property Resource that's something put out by the National Association of Realtors and that's another database of property information and you can look at plat maps there do you even know what a plat map is yet you can look at the history of properties there you can get some fantastic school information from there but it's another computer program you have to learn of course you have to know GPS cause you gotta get it around the places transaction desk or zip forms these are two different brand names of how you're gonna do your contracts you don't take a piece of paper and write on it and fill it out you go online and you fill it out online and then you have to figure out how to organize the pages online and then you have to send it to your client and they will sign it online and they will get it back to you and then you have to look it over and you have to sign it and you have to get it off to the other agent and then they have to get it back to you after their clients sign it Homesnap is another app on your phone and by the way transaction desk is also on your phone Homesnap is another app on the phone it's not a necessary one but a lot of your clients have and it's a great way to get your clients loyal to you it's an app you can send to them and they snap photos of houses that they like and of course you're gonna be on your phone texting all the time so if you don't know how to use apps if you're not good with a smartphone yet you gotta be good with it because you will be on it all day every day I've got five or six real estate apps on here in one little section and I have to use them all the time so if you're not tech savvy you're gonna need to work on a team or get tech savvy all right, let's talk a little bit about money most people as I mentioned at the beginning most people think that realtors make a ton of money some do but your money goes places so not only are you an independent contractor generally so you have to pay for your own car and pay for your own car insurance most people, not most people I don't know what the percentages are but it used to be that you would always put a buyer in your car when you went out looking at properties you drive them around it's a great time to talk to them stuff like that even before COVID fewer and fewer people were actually driving their clients who are mostly meeting them at houses but it's tough if you're gonna go see five or six houses but my car insurance company made me have higher in car insurance because I was transporting somebody in my car for a business purpose you have to buy your own computer to buy your own phone you have to pay your own MLS fees you have to pay your own phone service fees so there's a lot of money that comes out of your commission check that if you've used to working in an office you never thought about before the general public here's how much commission agents make okay, every time the listing agent makes a contract with the seller and that's where the commission is determined and that commission is always negotiable there's no standard fee there's no broker that sets the fee that you have to charge it is always negotiable between the listing agent and the seller okay so it depends on the market that you're in sometimes it's 6%, sometimes it's 7% sometimes it's different depending on if they're friends and family it's always flexible but let's just go with 6% right now just put a number out there of that 6% that the listing that the seller is going to pay to the listing agent's broker technically it goes to the broker the broker keeps part of that okay, maybe they're on that 50% split maybe they're on a 70-30 split the broker keeps 30% and the agent gets 70 but that 6% gets split to your broker already and then you also if you're that listing agent you have to pay the agent who brings the buyer in and their broker so you may charge your seller 6% you may keep 3% of that but then your broker gets part of that and the other 3% goes to the buyer and the buyer's agent and that buyer's agent has to give some to their broker plus then you have to pay all your expenses out of it so the amount of money that the agents get is split four ways right from the beginning not four equal ways but there's four people looking for money right from the beginning okay so we make less than people think that we do which means you need to calculate if you can afford to do this or not let's take an example here so median sale price for a single family home this means a detached home not a condo or a town home so it's pretty high 1,225,000 okay so if you're working as a buyer's agent let's see there's a listing for this price the median price and I bring a buyer in now usually the seller agent keeps more than half of that commission not always usually they keep more than half so if that's 6% most buyer's agents in the area pay out about 2.5% and by the way that will be listed in MLS when you're working with your buyers and taking it out taking them out so if I'm working as the buyer's agent I'm gonna get paid 2.5% of the purchase price okay listing agent's gonna keep the higher amount I'm gonna get 2.5% so if we do that math then my commission would be $30,000 625 okay great sounds like a lot of money just sell a couple houses a year I'm done but then my broker's gonna take their split let's say I'm working for a broker who takes 45% okay so we're gonna take almost $14,000 of my $30,000 and that leaves me with $16,844 still a lot of money if the buyer was easy and they bought a house pretty quickly sometimes they're not easy and sometimes they look at a million houses right now you're writing lots and lots of purchase agreements for each buyer before they actually win the bidding war but you can see how it seems like people here is 6% oh 6% of 1.2 million that's a ton of money no you don't end up with that and now not every broker is gonna split you 45% okay this is just an example to show you that it could be a lot lower but then you still have to pay all your own expenses out of that so you need to figure out usually when coaches are talking to you about how you earn money how you figure out what you need to make you work backwards what are all your expenses what do you need to take home and then figure out how many transactions you have to do here's some of your annual fees every year you have to pay the national association fees you have to pay your state association you have to pay your local association you have to pay the government to keep your license up to date oh actually actually that's a bad fee I shouldn't have told you every year because that's actually you have to renew every four years so divide that one by four so I'm off on that, sorry about that you have MLS fees you pay to use that MLS service and every year that equals $768 in San Francisco you have to pay for your lock box fee that electronic lock box that costs money E and O insurance that stands for errors and omissions insurance and that figure is probably too low but you pay an insurance company in case you get sued and they can cover you for it so it's a business insurance that you have to have and then also every four year cycle again your license renews every four years you have to pay for education so and I just pulled off the rates at Kaplan schools Kaplan schools is one of the places that offers education for real estate continuing education and pre-licensing and I took their package for the four years and divided by four to get that so I'm off by a little bit because the license fee but you can see that your annual fees are already quite a bit of money there before you've even sold a house so for those of you who are thinking well I'll just hang on my license for the next 10 years and not sell a property you are losing some money each year okay do, do, do all right so what's your day look like again up to you some people will set an appointment schedule I'm gonna read for the first hour of business news and then I'm gonna return phone calls and I'm gonna go out on appointments and then I'm gonna return phone calls at a certain time in the afternoon whatever you can set up your day and it will get ruined by somebody calling you up and needing something right away but some of the things you do I've mentioned working for a buyer versus working for a seller they can be different most people recommend trying to work with sellers and the reason for that is that you make more money with less running around for sellers right you list a house and you set it up for sale and there's a lot going on for that when you list a house I'm listing one on Thursday and I will go out to the property I will spend a long time there measuring it I will take all kinds of information about the house what kind of floors, what kind of dishwasher do they have central air all the details that are gonna go into MLS then I spend time writing up a nice little description for it I hire the photographer to go out there or do my own photographs to get it ready to go I won't hire a stager for this house it's a tiny little house but sometimes you have to hire the stager you have to put a sign in the yard and your company may charge you to put that sign in I have to get a lock box on it a lot of stuff goes into just getting it ready for sale but then you get to sit back and let buyers agents bring their buyers in and in a normal market you may be able to sit back for two or three weeks until you find the right buyer until the right buyer comes in and then you help your seller negotiate and then after the negotiations then you have to work to get it toward closing where the buyer's agents are okay, I've got Thursday night free the kids are playing softball they can disappear and you drive a buyer around and go show them four or five houses and you talk to them all night and you get home exhausted and you may do that with buyers for a couple of months before they find the right house so most people advise you to work with the seller more often because you can maybe make some more money that way but I just got a couple of questions right here May as we'll talk about one question says do you pay for staging or do the client does the client that can depend unfortunately what happens sometimes is you pay for staging you pay for photos you pay for the drone photos all this stuff and then the client fires you a month later and you've lost all the money you never got a commission we're on 100% commission here okay, that's another reason why it's easy to get in the business because any broker will hire you because they don't have anything to risk so some people will pay for it other times they will ask the client to pay for it up front and they will reimburse it to them at closing so it doesn't put you at risk because some staging if you've got a big house can be worth a lot of money so that's one thing that you can negotiate somebody asked where I got my E&O insurance quote from that was one of my quotes that I paid a previous year I just haven't checked on it recently so that's why I said the 350 on my errors and omissions insurance is probably wrong it's from a prior year so some of the things you're doing is you're working on contracts you're putting together all that paperwork and there's a lot of paperwork for every contract you're out showing houses which can be as I said, a lot of fun but it can get exhausting you have to be organized you have to figure out the best route you have to figure out how long it's gonna take you at each one if you're working with buyers you have to be in touch with their loan offices making sure they're getting approved you have to talk to the other agent if you've got a contract in the works you have to make sure you're in touch with the other agent all the time is your end going right? are we gonna close on time? is this done? your clients are calling you your buyers will need inspections some of your sellers will need inspections an appraisal has to be done on every house that has a loan on it you have to coordinate with the photographers you have to get your advertising done you have to continue to prospect so even though you're working with all these people that already have contracts and you're trying to work with them you still have to keep that advertising and the prospecting going you have to talk to the title company and get that scheduled the title company is where the closing happens where the exchange of money for keys happens but usually buyer and seller both have to schedule the time to be out there the both agents have to schedule it now these days of course they don't even want everybody to be there at the same time so it's a little bit easier to schedule it because not everybody's gonna be there at the same time but in the past you try to schedule it where these four busy parties could all be there at the same time when you're a listing agent you gotta get a lock box on the house you gotta put the signs out a lot of agents give gifts to their clients a lot of times there are brochures at the properties you have to write up and negotiate offers and sometimes negotiations go late into the night and sometimes they take over days when people are going back and forth I'll give you an extra $10,000 if you throw in the pool table you know, stuff like that and do a CMA that's a comparative market analysis that is where you sit down generally on the seller side and take a look at the house and say okay what's it worth let me spend an hour or so on MLS and go back and forth and see what it's worth okay here's a couple of bits of information about how you get started so every state has their own rules but you need 135 hours of education from an approved school 45 hours are called real estate principles 45 hours are called real estate practices another 45 hours of legal aspects that you have to take and then you have to you don't have to take an exam prep course but a lot of places teach you an exam prep course that kind of give you after you've taken these two and a half weeks three weeks of classes they will prep you a little bit more for the exam now here's something to think about getting into the business I say has a low bar right you take a test and you pass and you're in you don't have to buy an inventory or anything like that but you do have to have time to take these classes at least now that they're all online it's a lot easier it used to be that you'd have to show up for class for a couple of weeks and not do your regular job keep in mind also that the day you get your license if you sold a house that day you're probably still waiting a good month and a half for a paycheck but most people don't sell a house in the first couple of months because you haven't gotten up to business yet and it takes people a while to get things done but when you put a purchase agreement on a house this is what may second third something like that if I was working with a buyer today we put an offer on a house is a good chance it wouldn't close to the end of June because title work has to be done and moving vans have to be hired and appraisals have to be done and the loan process has to go through and so you usually the end of the following month is usually when properties close and you don't get a paycheck until they close okay so when you're starting out you do have to be able to plan for several months without paycheck all right you have to pass the test with only a 70% or higher if you're a good test taker you're golden if you're a bad test taker spend some time studying it has to be 18 years or older you have to be a US citizen and your background check is required and you are required to get fingerprinted then every four years cycle you need 45 hours and you'll have classes in ethics agency and that's who you represent trust fund handling that's the money that gets put down the earnest money gets put down I keep mentioning federal guidelines the fair housing act of 1968 is an anti-discrimination act and you do have to be careful to make sure that you don't by accident discriminate you take these classes every four years to make sure that you are understanding the ethics and that you understand fair housing and that you understand risk management risk management has a lot to do with keeping things confidential before the risk management courses were required for us I never had a lock on my password for my computers or my cell phone nobody else touches them I don't need a lock you know what you do need a password so 45 hours of education do every year but the pre-licensing to get your license you're starting out with 135 hours quick little bit of information on appraising more people are realtors than appraisers it's a totally different job it's still real estate so if you like real estate but you don't like people this is your job this is the much more logical side as I mentioned when you're working with buyers and sellers they panic they cry they're needy a lot of times they're also incredibly joyful a lot of times which is a lot of fun but they're emotional on the other hand when you are working in appraising you are the more logical side you are not working with the clients your client is the bank your client is the loan officer so they're business people they're not working nights and weekends so you can make your schedule a little bit better but you're going in and looking at the property itself and you're comparing it to other properties and you're taking statistics and working off of statistical information and futures and things like that so it's more solitary you work by yourself and you get to spend more time at your computer working by yourself, working at home and you don't have any panicked phone calls at 2am because your loan officer is not working then either so it's a very differently definitely a different personality type most appraisers don't really talk to other people very much you have more control over your schedule oops more control over your clients that you accept every order that they send you you can reject if you want the problem is it's much tougher to get into the business than it is into real estate you still need education you need 150 hours to get in and these classes can cost up to $2,000 easily and your license even just to be a trainee is $950 the problem is that after the last housing crash they made it much tougher on appraiser trainees and so almost nobody is willing to take on a trainee anymore you have to work with a certified appraiser for at least 6 months 1,000 hours you can't claim you got 1,000 hours in 3 months and that you're ready to move on so a lot of people are there for a year or more working as a trainee you still get paid as a trainee usually not very much it's a deal you work out with your mentor but after the last housing crash they made it very difficult for people to have trainees I used to have trainees under me it's not worth it anymore I mentioned family business when you're realtor when you're an appraiser it's very much a family business these days I teach some of the pre-licensing courses for appraisers the ones to get their licenses last couple of years I have maybe 7 people in class and that's it and we only run the class a couple of times a year and I always go around and ask them okay so why are you here what kind of job are you leaving and do you already have a mentor almost everybody already has a mentor because they shouldn't spend that kind of money on the classes until they do almost all of them are working for a family they're the only ones who are willing to take you on as a trainee so if you want to become an appraiser it's a great job but you need to figure out your mentor beforehand before you spend all that money on the classes and the training it's harder to get into the business much more training than real estate training but it can be a very good business somebody said explain why it's not worth taking on a trainee sorry yes so years ago one of my trainees worked on the opposite side of the metro as I did so it was great he worked with me he came with me on every appointment up until I knew what he was doing and then he could do appointments on his own as an appraiser you go out to a house you take a photo and take all the notes everything about that house you drive around and see what the other houses are like that you're going to compare it to your comps and then you go back and work on the report after I knew he was capable of doing the visits himself then he could do every visit on that side of town and then we would work on the report over the phone together and I would review his report but after the last housing crash they made it so the mentor had to go on every appointment well if I'm going on every appointment with you and then also helping you with every report why am I paying you so it made it so that most people will not take on trainees anymore they are trying to back off that and some of the regulation that has backed off but some of your clients have not backed off on it they still want the mentor to go on every single appointment and so that's why it's tougher there thanks for asking the question alright let me see okay so by the way the next slide will give you lots of links to the National Association, the San Francisco Association the California Association where you take your exams and some of the exams will be delayed right now because of COVID and fewer places fewer people taking them at a time alright I talked pretty quickly I talked for quite a while any questions that you have about it any things that you've heard any rumors that you've heard anything that you're curious about feel free to ask oh how about property management property management is you still need a real estate license for some property management and for rental stuff property management is a whole different deal I do have a friend who works in property management and he manages big properties or small properties they take a percentage each month and every contract is different as far as what they handle he's got a great staff of handy people so that he takes the burden off of the homeowners right now I own one rental property and it's just a small condo and my tenant is great so I don't need somebody like him but I have people texting me every single day trying to buy it because rents are going up also and so a lot of people own a lot of rental properties and they do need to they do need to have management so they can go on vacation and get out of there alright let's see let's see got some other questions down here oh so someone says from census California lost population what is residential advantage as during pandemic 2020 families migrated to second-tier cities yes a lot of people have moved various places and gotten out of metro areas I have a friend who moved out of the state didn't tell his employer and his employer is telling people they have to come back to work in the summer he's got to figure out how to tell his employer that I mean it is changing where people live Texas the Texas market is going crazy also Texas market is definitely skyrocketing in prices and people are fighting for houses there also I don't know what's going to happen in commercial real estate it's funny right near my house they're building light rail to get to downtown downtown doesn't really exist anymore I don't know if they need the light rail anymore it's been in process for years and I don't know if the commercial property is going to come back you know every time something good happens something bad happens to somebody else and maybe it will come back eventually but maybe not for a few years so I don't know exactly what's going to happen to commercial if you want to buy a commercial property you can probably get a darn good deal yeah Texas has a non-disclosure state I don't know how people work there as a non-disclosure state it means that you don't know what a house sold for I can look up you know the tax records of what something sold for easily I can look up who the owner is easy but in Texas it's very difficult somebody asked about that property management how to start working for one if you've never done it honestly sorry I do not know much about property management I would get a hold of one of the companies because some of them are probably hiring because they probably are taking on more rental properties right now right if people are so they might be I'm sorry I don't know much but I would get a hold of someone asking what is considered a fair commission split that depends on what your broker is offering you right I was happy to pay the 45-50% when I started out because my broker had an office for me and provided the paper and provided tons of training but later on I wasn't willing to pay that because I didn't need that help anymore so interview brokers interview other realtors and see what kind of deals they're getting and what they offer and what's important to them I worked at 70-30 for a long time and that was great what does an appraiser earn on average for each residential appraisal in San Francisco I do not know the answer to that it's hard to say what the average is plus average has been skyrocketing during this massive movement because there are fewer appraisers out there and we're all swamped so prices are going up in some parts of the country they're making $300 in appraisal I was making that back when I started 20 some years ago other places they don't do anything for under $1,000 and of course they're I know yes for an average but of course properties are all different if I've got a simple little house built in 1950 in the neighborhood not a problem but if I've got property with waterfront and a turret and all kinds of crazy stuff I'm going to charge them a lot more money I would guess in San Francisco it's over a thousand per per order but that is just a guess do you have to get a license for multiple states if you want to do real estate in different states absolutely some of them are reciprocal licenses where they will let you just take a test and not go all through the education but a lot of people have licenses in two states where they spend the summers in Florida or the neighboring state especially if you're near the border of the state absolutely just every state has different rules on what you do there how many hours does each appraisal take the answer to every single appraisal question is it depends a simple one I can be at the house for 20 minutes and knock out the report in a little over an hour it used to be quicker but they have a lot more forms in there now with probably a half hour to an hour of research so a couple of hours some reports take days because there's a lot of research there's a lot of data that you have to consider sometimes there just are not comparable properties you know you've got the only two story in a neighborhood of all one stories or neighborhood of all condos and things like that I do not hire a state it depends on if the clients have crappy furniture or nice furniture depends on the price range of the house right now I'm not going to bother to stage many houses because they're not going to be on the market long enough to even get the furniture in there I don't even hire a photographer for every single house a lot of agents do but again for the lower income properties lower housing prices iPhones are not horrible but staging can get very expensive sometimes you just stage one or two rooms but a lot of times the clients have good stuff you could also hire a stage that doesn't rent you all the furniture but that goes in and gives a consultation and will tell the clients move this take that down put this rug here and they don't provide any furniture and like that they just is a consultation how to take the stuff that the client already has and makes it better how much time do you take to measure on a simple house the quickest I've ever measured the house is 12 minutes longest it's ever taken me I've had a couple of houses that took three hours and those had indoor swimming pools and indoor golf simulators and indoor sport courts and movie theaters and stuff like that and unusual houses but I'm at most houses around the 20 minute mark but all that depends on the neighborhood and the kind of house and how much of the house is fake instead of house recently it really was mostly a rectangle but they had so much build out of goofy little stone walls that weren't part of the house it was just decorative stuff so all right that is the end of the questions at the moment so if anybody has anything else feel free to drop it in otherwise we may be all set oops one more question oh just a thanks okay you're welcome it was a thank you for you Zoe we did a fantastic job despite all the disruptions and I apologize for that you did an incredible job um so thanks thanks so much and that was an amazing amount of information I think um so I didn't you tell me that this is like a six week course that you just delivered in an area that is not a course that I've ever taught before but there is a lot of information that I do talk fast real estate is kind of a complicated business there's a lot to know so all right well thank you so much Zoe and again thanks for that and we'll see the rest of you at our next program okay thank you bye bye