So You Want to Be a Realtor, by Eric Pfeifer - Sanibel Realtor
LAST UPDATED: 22 November 2005

I am honored to have been asked by the Island Reporter to write a Real Estate column on a bi-weekly basis. Rene Severance asked me not to write a standard article with facts and figures coming straight from the Internet. Rather, he said he was looking for a unique view of the Real Estate World on Sanibel & Captiva Islands.

Since getting into this roller coaster ride of a business just over four years ago, I have constantly been asked how one gets started selling real estate. Specifically, with over 300 agents selling real estate on these two barrier islands, how could one possibly break into this market.

I never thought of myself as a salesperson. I have a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Vanderbilt University and worked as a Civil & Environmental Engineer in Florida. I also spent eight years running a printing and embroidery business in Baltimore. One year while vacationing on Sanibel, a Realtor talked my wife and me into buying a near beach lot on Sanibel. He said we could not lose money, and it would be the best decision we would ever make in our lives. Well, he was right because that decision made us pack up and move here in 2001 with no job. Sanibel just felt right for our home and for our family. I never forgot that Realtor, and when I was jobless, he offered to put me to work as his assistant.

Within six months, I was ready to be thrown to the lions, and I went off on my own. However, as a new Realtor, there are many challenges to overcome before the first sale. First of all, one must sit through a seven-day real estate class, pass an in-class test, and then wait to sit for the state exam to become a licensed agent. There are two real challenges involved here: One is to stay awake for the entire seven days, and the second is to wait for the state to actually read your application and call you back. Finally, after about two months of waiting, I passed the state exam and I was ready to sell.

However, a Realtor cannot get to work without a few tools of the trade. First, every good Realtor needs a cell phone to clip to his or her belt. Without a cell phone ringing in public all day, a Realtor certainly would not look professional. Then the next purchase is usually a laptop computer to be used while working open houses and eating breakfast with the kids because you have to see all of the new listings which came on the market during the previous 24 hours. Of course, to receive all of the new listings, every Realtor must become a member of the local Association of Realtors. In doing so, one must also join the Florida Association of Realtors and the National Association of Realtors. These are not free of course, and before you logon to the MLS website, you are already several thousand dollars in debt. Of course, as you rapidly approach your first transaction, you will need a database program to organize all of your information. Post-it notes just don’t stick forever. With the installation of your new database, don’t forget to get the synchronization tool for your cell phone. This helps when you recognize someone in the grocery store who you just saw at an open house, and you can act like you’re on the phone while you look up their name.

Of course one cannot sell real estate on their own without working for a Broker. As you consider several dozen brokerage firms currently licensed on the island, you look for one which would be a good fit for your personality or one which will offer you a position, whichever comes first. As you settle into your new cubby hole where you will be sitting for 60 hours a week for the rest of your life, you realize that you will need a desktop computer, printer, and all of the same software you just installed on your laptop. Also, a Realtor cannot work without a state-of-the-art digital camera to produce colorful brochures for all of the listings he or she is about to get. At this point, you start to wonder if your Broker will give you a loan, but then you decide you may want to wait for Day 2 on the job to ask.

As you work out the knots in your stomach, you hear a Realtor in the next cubby mention “search engine optimization”, and you realize that you will never be found without a new website. It is at this time that you realize you cannot wait for the Broker to come back from lunch, and you call him on his cell phone to ask about that loan. Getting a webmaster to call you back for an appointment to design a custom website is like trying to get a roofer to call you to come look at a potential leak. Since you know your potential clients can’t wait that long, you respond to one of the 3000 spam e-mails you received since your Broker let you hook up your computer to the office network. “For only $500 and $39.95 a month, you too can have a website by tomorrow.” With no other options, you ask the Realtor in the next cubby to take your picture so you can send it to the online web company to get your website rolling. Even though your picture looks like a mug shot, you decide to ask the office manager to teach you how to upload the picture to your computer so that you may send it to the webmaster. And, by the way, you ask her to use the same awful picture for your first business cards which you will need tomorrow because someone asked you to sit an open house for them.

Your Broker finally calls back later that day, and you realize you may get that loan before you sink. However, the reason for the call is to inform you that you must take another class for the 45-hour post-license course as soon as possible. I guess missing another six days of meeting clients won’t hurt because you don’t have the business cards anyway.

On day two, you go to check out your new website and find that you are ranked 3,521 for Sanibel Real Estate websites. Not bad for a first try. At this point, you begin to realize that this job may not be as easy as the other 300 Realtors make it look. You start to wonder if you really should have spent all of that time studying for that 100 question multiple-choice exam. You start to wonder if you will ever use your database program, digital camera or if anyone will ever find your website.


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