It’s a rewarding career to be a real estate agent.
Realtors serve an extraordinarily important role in helping millions of people across the country navigate the complex, often risky, process of real estate transactions. We endeavor to maximize opportunities and to minimize risk for our clients in their real estate transactions. Clients can be investors, landlords, home buyers, home sellers, tenants, and developers. Whether clients are buying, selling, or leasing their real estate such as homes, land, commercial spaces and buildings, they deserve expert representation. It’s a rewarding career to be a real estate agent.
Realtors can work full-time or part-time. Whether it’s a full-time role or a part-time role, the same high standards apply to everyone. We need to be fully committed to helping our clients. We need to be available when our clients need us. We provide education and guidance, facilitate contract activities, negotiate in our clients’ interests, form and implement strategies and plans, consult and listen with empathy, maintain flawless ethical and professional performance, and much much more.
Being a Realtor can be exciting and rewarding. It can also be stressful and emotional. In addition to helping with the complexities of real estate transactions, we are helping our clients through a significant life event. This is much more significant than simply selling or buying a home, or buying or selling an investment property affecting our clients’ retirement plans. Sure, buying, selling, leasing, and managing real estate is certainly the outcome, yet the extensive representation effort to get our clients to that point is the work we perform. We can’t forget what it was like for us to buy and sell our own homes when leaving behind one home and moving to another – we all go through this.
Real estate agents in Virginia are licensed by the State of Virginia. The path to being licensed as a real estate agent includes satisfactory completion of accredited real estate licensing courses. Courses are conducted in-person and online. The courses are comprehensive so you will learn a lot. It’s feasible to complete the real estate licensing courses in a few weeks while dedicating a few hours a week to them. Following completion of the courses, you need to complete licensing examination. This real estate licensing exam includes a state portion with questions regarding state-level real estate matters and a national section that – can you guess – regards national-level real estate matters.
When pursuing a real estate license it is important to already be connected with a real estate brokerage. “Connected” doesn’t necessarily mean officially affiliated with a brokerage, but at least to be in communications with one you may join. Here are the reasons this is important.
You may be able to get someone at the brokerage to guide you while taking the real estate licensing courses. There is a lot of information to learn and a two-part exam to pass, so it is nice to have someone from the brokerage helping you along the way. Also, real estate agents must be affiliated with a brokerage in Virginia in order to work as real estate agents. Upon completing the real estate licensing exam, you will submit an application to Virginia’s Real Estate Board and indicate in your application the identity of the real estate brokerage you will be joining. By the way, brokers in charge of the brokerage decide who joins, so you already need to have that acceptance in place. The license you receive will be an “active” real estate license. You can apply for and receive a real estate license without being affiliated with a brokerage, yet you will be issued an “inactive” real estate license and that does not permit you to work as a real estate agent.
Nearly all real estate agents are affiliated with a brokerage as independent contractors vice as employees. This means real estate agents are self-employed, a position that permits so much potential for the agent. The brokerage is responsible for providing supervision to help agents, entering into brokerage-client representation agreements (clients and agents do not sign representation agreements; they are signed by clients and brokers with an agent designated to help the client.), enforcing compliance, processing payments, and a number of other very important responsibilities. Brokerages may also provide their real estate agents with liability and E&O insurance, training, record keeping platforms, email service, and more resources.
Brokerages are businesses, too. They need money to operate and to exist for their real estate agents. They get this money by receiving a portion of their agents’ fees collected from clients. Sometimes this is called a “commission split” or “transaction fee”. By state law, all commissions or fees are received by the brokerage from clients and then brokerages keep their portion and disburse the rest to the real estate agent. The amount brokerages retain varies widely from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. Some brokerages will retain portions on every transaction while some brokerages will set a maximum annual amount. This is an important topic to discuss with brokerages before selecting one to join.
Veteran Realty is committed to helping our clients succeed. We welcome prospective Realtors and current Realtors who are similarly committed to join us. Feel free to contact Veteran Realty for more information.
Call us at 540-571-4911 or message us using our Contact Us form via the link at the top of this page.