No matter what profession one is in, only a small percentage of those in it will ever strive to perfect their skills. The rest are happy just learning enough to get by. Understand this: it does not take much to get licensed. In the state of Texas, if you are a college graduate you are required to take a minimum of four classes totaling 30 hours. Those without a college degree have to take much more. Most students’ goals at that time are to simply get through the boring class, pass the state test and get the state license. With this said, the retention of the information probably did not become useful until they actually found someone who became a guinea pig for them to get practical experience. Unfortunately, all the class training in the world doesn’t compare to actually going through a “real” complete transaction, a real experience.
You may ask, what about the national real estate companies that tout how great and knowledgeable their agents are? As much as real estate offices claim to offer training it is usually up to the agents as to whether or not they choose to go through any of the training classes or programs their real estate broker offers. Most agents are contracted and not employed. The real estate broker is typically the owner of the agency. The agency holds the active licenses of the real estate agent. The goals and objectives of a real estate broker and a real estate agent are different. The broker’s goal is to bring on as many agents as possible to help grow their business, and a real estate agent’s goal is to bring on as many buyers and sellers to help grow their business.
So, though it is in the best interest of the broker to put out well-trained agents into the field, their number one objective is to bring on as many agents as possible in order to charge a monthly fee and gain a split on the commissions. Therefore, you have many real estate agents who are out there winging it and trying to figure out how to run their business with no business experience. This lack of business experience is difficult to overcome and it is hard to get help because most busy real estate agents don’t make time to help each other. Many view it as helping their competition and are not interested in sharing trade secrets. As a result, many learn by making mistakes through trial and error. Don’t get caught up in one of their mistakes.
Also, real estate is a straight commission business: no sales, no income! As a result, many real estate agents start off part-time trying to work the business on the weekends. They have not committed to working the business full-time. The risk of them making mistakes is great because the business is so detail oriented. Years of practice makes perfect and you need a lot practice to get good, let alone perfect. Check out http://www.makenommistakes.com/ to get a list of a few characteristics that should disqualify them as your agent:
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