Real estate agent
Real estate can be exciting, and can offer high rewards for hard workers, writes Denise Cullen.
CONRAD Anderson, who flew into Brisbane from Scotland several weeks ago, is looking for work as a real estate agent. With a varied job history that includes a stint in door-to-door sales, he feels he’d be suited to it, and believes that population growth in the Brisbane-Gold-Sunshine Coast corridor — which added 65,100 people in 2004 according to a report by accounting firm KPMG — provides a lot of potential.
“There are so many people living here,” he says. “I was up at Mount Cootha on the weekend, looking out over the city, and you can’t see where the houses end.”
Along with 17 other aspiring agents, Anderson, 29, has come to one of the regular “careers nights” offered by the Ray White Kenmore real estate agency, in Brisbane’s western suburbs.
“People come into real estate because it’s a very exciting job,” says principal Karen Burns, whose brief on information evenings is to deliver an overview of the agency’s requirements.
“All real estate offices are always looking for staff.”Sporting cropped blonde hair and wearing polished black court shoes and a two-piece trouser suit emblazoned with the Ray White logo, Burns makes it clear that shabby chic and boho fashion trends are not welcome in her airconditioned offices. “I’m pretty particular — I like well-groomed and I like well-spoken,” she says.
The reason is that real estate salespeople get “about 30 seconds” after a potential vendor has opened the door to them. “If you’re all scruffy, and your colours clash, all those things make an instant impression and then you’re on the back foot to start with. This is quite an upmarket area with properties costing up to $3-$4 million, so you need to be able to relate to the customers who are actually in the area.”
She notes there are many other qualities demanded of agents, including punctuality, confidence, friendliness, an ability to build rapport with lightning speed, and outstanding product knowledge.
For new recruits the latter is typically achieved by trawling through every house or apartment listed by one’s own agency, driving past everything else listed for sale through other agencies, poring through recent sales data, shadowing more experienced salespeople as they conduct appraisals and presentations, and browsing real estate internet sites.
Developing a prospecting plan, with the aim of obtaining client listings, is also vital, and generally involves the rookie making numerous phone calls, wearing out their shoe leather conducting letterbox drops, and developing and maintaining a contact database. “We train you intensively,” Burns says. “After six weeks my new salespeople look like they’ve been run over by a truck … they’re not used to the
activity. In and out of the car, up and down stairs. You’re always on the move.”
Jennine Leonarder-Collins, who launched her own boutique company Leonarder Collins Luxury Homes after leaving McGrath Estate Agents earlier this year, can relate to the exhaustion of early days on the job: “For my first two years in real estate, which is how long it takes to build a career, I was working 12 to 16-hour days and surviving on very little sleep.”
A certain amount of emotional exhaustion typically accompanies the role as well, she adds, when you consider that some of the people who are selling their biggest asset are doing so reluctantly, forced through circumstances such as divorce, ill-health, or a change of career. “At the end of the week, I’m literally written off, because I wear all their trials and tribulations on my shoulders,” she says. What sustains Leonarder-Collins is a lifelong passion for property.
“As a child my parents took me round housing estates that were being built, and I found it fascinating. Now, I not only get to look in people’s beautiful homes, I get to stand in them and pretend they’re all mine for a while.” Compared to other jobs which offer a comparable earnings potential, the real estate industry’s entry-level hurdles are astonishingly low. While requirements differ from state to state, in Queensland, a five-day registration course costing $700 (or $650 for Real Estate Institute of
Queensland members) is all that’s needed to secure a position in a real estate office and gain the necessary registration through the Office of Fair Trading.(Additional training is available to people who wish to become auctioneers, or property developers, or own or manage their own agency.) Three aspiring agents sitting through Burns’s careers night presentation have completed the course, and, after the session, they and other participants clamour to speak to her.
But Anderson hangs back: “It’s not as straightforward as I thought. It seems to be a self-employed career choice which I was not really expecting. The whole aspect of it (seems to be) you’re running your own business but still under their wings. Still, I think I will take it further.”
By Denise Cullen, The Weekend Australian, March 4 2006.
