How Long Will It Take to Get My First Listing?

It could happen right away. It could take up to a year.

There’s no average timeline. That might be frustrating to hear, but it’s helpful to prepare for. 

New real estate agents should work on their business like they could get the first listing tomorrow, but prepare as though it could take six, nine, 12 months.

In practice, that looks like…

• Creating a rock-solid listing presentation strategy and style (psst: here’s how new real estate agents can win listing presentations)
• Networking, making connections and reaching out to friends and family
• Building your real estate marketing strategy
• Developing your real estate Instagram presence
• Practicing writing real estate listing descriptions that sell

How Much Money Will I Make in My First Year As a New Real Estate Agent?

The answer to this question is pretty dependent on the answer to the first question. 

A new real estate agent’s income depends on how many listings they can get in their first year, as well as how much commission they can net by representing buyers in a purchase.

The first year can be challenging. Months may go by without any cashflow, leaving new agents wondering whether they chose the wrong career. 

The uncertainty of the first year in real estate is good preparation for a real estate agent’s career. Agents are like entrepreneurs; they can’t count on an established annual salary. Some years will be better than others. The best real estate agents learn how to navigate the real estate industry’s peaks and valleys.

There are other ways for new real estate agents to earn income, without representing buyers or sellers. Newbie realtors should consider these real estate side hustles to create a form of income while they get their real estate business off the ground.

Where Do I Find Clients?

A real estate client can come from anywhere — friends and family, a referral network, connections of past clients, social media, advertising and so on. 

Without past experience or a big network, new real estate agents have a slightly smaller net to cast. But that doesn’t mean they’re out of luck.

To bag their first client, new agents need to:

• Reach out to their networks. Let family and friends know in casual conversation. Share the news on your personal social media accounts (and invite your followers to follow your new real estate-focused accounts). Spread the word far and wide.
  
• Get face time. New agents need to get into their communities and introduce themselves to as many people as possible. Do some real estate door-knocking. Go to local events. Drop off business cards and flyers to neighbourhood businesses. Offer to host open houses for other agents in your brokerage. 

Spreading the news and generating leads are the most important business activities that a new real estate agent can focus on in their first year. The most experienced and successful real estate agents know that the key to growing a business is keeping your client pipeline full.

What’s a client pipeline? Picture a pipe divided into several zones. Each zone represents a different stage in a lead’s journey to becoming a client — like discovering your business to signing up for your real estate newsletter to booking a call to giving you their listing.

To ensure steady and ongoing success, new agents should strive to keep the pipeline full with leads sitting in different zones.

How Do I Get a Client to Hire Me Without Experience?

New real estate agents are like university grads looking for their very first job. How do you get someone to believe that you’re the right fit for the job if you haven’t yet done the job?

Convincing a seller or buyer to take a chance on a new agent can be tricky. That’s why friends and family (see the answer to the previous question) can be the best source for initial business. But new agents need more than luck; they need a strong unique value proposition.

If a lead asked why they should hire you, how would you respond? Your answer is your unique value proposition as a real estate agent — what defines you and sets you apart. 

New real estate agents need to focus on developing a confident unique value proposition right out of the gate. It’s what they’ll use when networking, speaking to leads, writing their About Me page and Instagram bio and putting together listing presentations.

What If I Only Want to Work With Sellers?

There are all sorts of real estate niches that agents can specialize in.

Condos. Investment properties. Commercial real estate. Luxury real estate.

It’s not exactly a niche, but there are agents who work exclusively with sellers. These agents tend to be more experienced, with plenty of years under their belt in the industry.

New real estate agents should avoid limiting themselves. The adage “beggars can’t be choosers” essentially applies here; new agents want to maximize their opportunities for experience and exposure, taking as much business of any kind that they can get.

That means working with sellers and buyers, but also other types of clients, too, like people looking for rental homes and apartments.

Do I Have to Be On-Call All the Time?

One of the perks of working as a real estate agent is the ability to make your own schedule. One of the disadvantages of working as a real estate agent is that sometimes you can’t control your own schedule.

Both things can be true.

The answer to this question: no, you don’t have to be on-call all the time. But you do need to be prepared for a schedule that isn’t reliably 9 to 5. 

That can mean later starts if you don’t have meetings or time-sensitive deadlines in the mornings, but it often means being available for phone calls and negotiations later in the evening.

When business is good and things are busy, realtor burnout can set in. That’s why it’s key for real estate agents to set boundaries with real estate clients and use realtor productivity strategies to work smarter, not harder.