Jesse catches up with Paul from Altitude Real Estate to find out what a day in the life of a Real Estate agent or Realtor is like.
Check out more information about a career as a Real Estate Agent at Student Edge here: https://studentedge.org/career-life/find-a-career/real-estate-agent
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Transcript:
Hi I'm Jessie. Today thanks to Student Edge we're gonna go inside a career and find out if it's the right job for you.
Houses come in all shapes and sizes but have you ever thought about what's actually involved in selling one? Today we're at Altitude Real Estate to see if it's the right job for you.
We're having a chat to someone who knows all about the real estate industry. Paul Tonich, director of Altitude Real Estate.
Today we want to find out exactly what it takes to do what you do you. So do you reckon you can show us around?
So Jesse, what you want to know?
Well mate, you've won countless awards, I want to know exactly how you got to where you are.
The age of 26 I was looking for a career change and I just purchased a properly a few years earlier and the real estate agent called me when he heard about that and said hey why don't you come have a look at real estate. It struck my interest I had a meeting with him and didn't look back.
I think when i look back at why my results have been what they are it's my ability to communicate I really went out and met with some great people that showed me probably just a little tweaks you've gotta do to have the ability to win trust really quickly. We only get 45 minutes, obviously we've got to know our product and strategies but winning their trust is probably the best thing you can do to really step ahead in the career get away from the pack.
So Paul I imagine being a real estate agent is just all about selling houses.
No, it's a lot more than that. Really you get to see a broad part of society and when someone calls you they actually have a problem that you've gotta solve and usually it's coming off something that has happen in their life. Sometimes it's a death of a family member sometimes it's actually a job promotion or having kids or even a marriage breakup, and at the time you have to be able to, I suppose, relate to the people and actually absorb their pressure and stress or actually listen and actually know what they want and so part of it is not just actually pulling the property on the market it's actually understanding why.
Okay Paul, so let's go behind the scenes
I want you to take me through a normal day of a real estate agent.
Yeah, firstly it's seven days away no matter what part of the career involved in you actually serve the public and you serve your clients so you know you can set a structure for the week but part of it is that we're reactive. The phone suddenly rings, you had four five things to do that day like getting marketing ready writing ads, you know, talking to the owners. You've always gonna be prepared you always going to be ready. It's one of the things that the elite people in this industry know, always be able to be contactable, always being on call and that's a really hard balance as you develop maybe getting married or having a family, of keeping that sustainable.
Well mate it looks like there's a lot of hard work but there's also a lot of rewards.
Yeah absolutely, it's probably the first opportunity that a lot of people get to open a business and in a business allows if you are a creative type that you got full autonomy of where you can take things, you've got the ability to be flexible with your time but there is huge financial rewards. Someone coming in to the industry that could actually work
hard for the first couple years by year three or four they could be taking home
anywhere between six hundred thousand to a million dollars a year and that's not totally unusual for elite performers.
Okay Paul, so now it's time to give us the edge, I've got 3 question for you, what makes a good real estate agent?
Huge energy to start with, great enthusiasm and the real ability to win trust with people.
How do I become an agent and what qualifications do you need?
You don't have to have gone through uni, you do need to be licensed so you do a course with the Real Estate Institute, but really there's a chance for traineeship, a lot
of good agents are looking for personal assistants. After maybe two or three
years those people develop into sales people themselves and build your own
business.
OK Paul, so if you can start again next week what's one thing you would do differently?
I think I'd understand that I could have joined the industry earlier. When I did join i was 26 years of age, the average age of an agent was 57 and I had this perception that you maybe had to be old and grey to get credibility with owners.
Nowadays at the age of 20 you can start as an agent, you just got to have drive and ambition.
