Try it for 5 - Personal Experience Profile
Real Estate Agent

After completing her training at TAFE, Jackie started her own Real Estate business. 17 years on Jackie sells property in Perth’s northern suburbs and lectures on the industry at TAFE. Real Estate isn’t about houses – it’s about people. People think Real Estate is easy but they don’t realise how you have to liaise with people, calm them down and listen to them when they’re not in a very nice frame of mind.

It’s not as glamorous or highly paid as people think. There are a lot of unpleasant moments in this job. You’re dealing with something that people are emotionally attached to and that takes the average family thirty years to pay off. You can have bad days but then you get a good client and all the enthusiasm comes rushing back again.

There’s no standard start or finish time or guaranteed paycheck every fortnight. You have to be a certain type of person to succeed in this industry and to be able to live with the financial uncertainty.

You do have regular clients as well as recommendations and referrals. The stranger you sell a house to can become a future client, so your listings grow quickly. Word of mouth is one of the most important things in this industry. You must keep in touch with your clients so that when they are ready to sell they know where to find you. If people like you they’ll stick with you.

You become a part of people’s lives because you spend a lot of time with them at odd hours. You quickly become a very good negotiator because you’re in their home and there are always dramas to contend with.

I meet people at the property they’re interested in and take them through it. Most people have a gut feeling about what they want but they may ask you your opinion on the location of the property, extensions and the potential to overcapitalise. They want your professional opinion.

I have no typical day except that I always solve problems. I spend at least fifty per cent of my day on the mobile phone either answering questions or finding answers for clients. Clients call me about financial approval, home appraisals, home listings or completing the paperwork on a property.  I also have to decide how I’m going to advertise and organise home open dates.

I am responsible for negotiating the price of settlement on a property. I meet separately with both the seller and the buyer to present the offer and counter offer.  The process can be tricky as people take offers very personally. I’ve seen people bang things down on the table as they respond. Sellers often have a strong emotional attachment to their property, which can make them overprice it.
 
I had one client who threw an offer across the table and told me to tell the buyer what to do with it. It wasn’t very pleasant but that kind of thing happens a lot, so you can’t take it personally. You have to compose yourself and carry on because that piece of paper is your income. You need to take an aggressive situation and turn it around and get the conversation flowing again.

If you want to get into the industry you can complete a Certificate III at TAFE in Real Estate Sales. The four-week full-time course gives you the qualification to become a sales representative for a licensed property agent. 

The best advice I could give would be to prepare for lots of ups and downs. It can be a lot of fun but we’ve had some lean times. If you think you can succeed in the industry then just go for it! Just make sure that you can be thick-skinned enough so you don’t take things personally.

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