I’ll admit, before I even got into the industry myself I held the very same view, that being that being a realtor makes for some of the easiest work you can do while at the same time entering into what can be a very lucrative career. That couldn’t be further from the truth – well the part about it being easy, that is.

It’s far from easy in the real estate industry and while a hard working realtor can most definitely make bucket loads of money, the reason why it’s so hard to crack the industry is because there is just so much work to do. The amount of work you have to do in order to get certified and cleared is only a precursor to all the work awaiting you once you start selling houses and engaging in everything else to do with the industry.

It’s about a whole lot more than just taking calls from homeowners who want to sell their houses, listing those properties, showing those properties to prospective buyers and then collecting commission once the sale has been made. For starters there is always a ton of paperwork to be done and the stacks and stacks of papers you initial and sign as the buyer may scare you, but spare a thought for those of us on the other side. Your paperwork is nothing but an anthill compared to all the paperwork we have to complete, not least of which entails pouring over title deeds amongst a lot of other tasks.

Personally the part about the job I enjoy the most is the part where I get to interact with prospective buyers during a property viewing, which admittedly is the part most outsiders of the industry get to see and thus associate with perhaps the only part of it. I love the interaction, especially when the properties under consideration are being viewed by newly-formed families of two or more.

There’s nothing quite like showing a family around and as time goes by during the viewing of a specific property, seeing them visualising the space as their home.

Once the sale has been closed however or even if it hasn’t been made and the property is essentially still on the market, the real hard work starts (pronounced “boring”).

This is when it basically just becomes an extension of the legal field, to the extent that sometimes I wish I could open up an entire legal division to form part of my operation, but then that would never quite be of the quality offered by specialists in their field such as Petroske Riezenman & Meyers, P.C. Speaking of which – liaising with family law / divorce lawyers forms such as big part of our jobs as real estate agents that our professional circles overlap so naturally.

I’d say the showing of the properties constitutes about 30% of all the work we do and the rest assumes the form of what can essentially be said to be administrative work. If we’re not on the phone we’re responding to and sending out emails or compiling and completing mountains of paperwork.