As a newly licensed realtor, you’re probably working flat out but haven’t made your first sale yet. You’re most likely posting on social media, calling contacts you haven’t spoken to in ages to get them to recommend you, and attending every open house you can to connect with potential buyers.
Things get slightly easier when you make your first sale and start building networks. But, as a realtor, you’re still unlikely to get a guaranteed paycheck at the end of the month. So in this feast-or-famine industry, you need to find ways to generate stable income.
There’s no such thing as overnight commissions as a real estate agent. However, there are ways you can speed up the process, or take on some side jobs. This can also provide a steady monthly income even when you’re already making sales.
If you’re wondering how to make money quickly as a new real estate agent, we’ve compiled a list of things you can do to accelerate your first sale—like marketing yourself, networking, farming leads, and maximizing the value you bring to every relationship to build a referral network.
Table of contents
How quick can you make money as a new real estate agent?
1. Accelerate making sales
2. Maximize the value in every relationship
Ready to make money fast as a new real estate agent?
Frequently asked questions about how to make money quick as a new real estate agent
How quick can you make money as a new real estate agent?
As a new real estate agent, you can make money in three to six months. Tait Militana, a writer at Realtyna, says you should be making consistent money after your first year and it takes around 18 months to be able to live from real estate alone.
There are two ways to make money as a realtor: working with buyers (buyer agents) or sellers (listing agents).
1. Buyer agent
If you choose to be a real estate agent that works with buyers, you may have a slightly easier job as the listings are already out there. You just need to find them, set appointments, and take your prospects to different locations. If you need to make money fast, you should consider becoming a buyer agent first.
However, as a buyer agent, you’ll have an increased workload when it comes to paperwork. You’ll also need to continue working with the client until the deal is closed, which may take an additional 40 to 50 days. This means you usually can only handle a few clients simultaneously as it requires a lot of one-to-one and manual work of showing them around different houses.
2. Listing agent
If you’re planning to become a listing agent, you should know that it takes longer to nurture leads and get them to sell their property. This process can take months or several years.
As a listing agent, you take on numerous different properties, list them on the housing market, and promote them using automated systems like Facebook Ads. This means you can maximize your efforts and increase the chances of getting future commissions.
Depending on where you’re located, listing agents might also get a slightly different commission percentage on the sale price compared to the buyer agent.
Agents can work on either side of the real estate transaction.
1. Accelerate making sales
There’s no such thing as making money overnight as a real estate agent. However, you can accelerate the process to get your first sale by following these steps:
- Market yourself and build your name
- Join a realtors’ association
- Focus on buyer leads
- “Farm” the local area
- Target buyers at the top of the funnel
- Promote other agents’ listings
- Work on your sales skills
- Work your network
Market yourself and build your name
As a realtor, you can only make money if you have clients. That means you need to market yourself and allow others to get to know you and become interested in working with you.
There are different ways to market yourself, from leveraging word of mouth to placing a billboard on busy highways. The fastest way to get your first lead, however, is by getting a friend or family member to make you their agent. Once you have at least one client, you can start promoting ads on social media and adding testimonials as social proof.
In addition, you can go on podcasts as a guest speaker, write real estate blogs, get business cards to share at parties, or promote yourself in local media.
Join a realtors’ association
There are different realtors’ associations across the US. Vernon Corum, licensed real estate agent, and founder of Staycating and the Short Term Pro, believes you should join your local branch to:
- Stay on top of National Association of Realtors (NAR) rules, regulations, and procedures. Get help from them as they understand the NAR new guidelines and translate them into local requirements. “It’s good to have local people who you can reach out to when you have a problem or are dealing with an issue. You can go to them for friendly helpful advice,” Vernon says.
- Network. The local association usually hosts events for realtors to get together, have fun, meet one another, and network. You can also meet vendors and possible partners to grow your business, like builders.
- Continuous learning. As a real estate agent, you need to be on top of ever-changing laws, regulations, and contracts. Being part of your local association provides you with timely educational material, events, and training.
- Give back to the community. Local associations usually do community outreach and have committees devoted to investing time, money, and resources in those communities. “Many of these committees have local charities they partner with to provide food, shelter, and clothing to the less fortunate,” explains Vernon.
When you join the NAR, you can participate in different efforts to give back to the community you work in.
Vernon Corum used his realtor’s background and knowledge to build his short-term rental empire in (STR) in East Tennessee. This brings him the security of a steady monthly income without much additional work as he uses Jetstream to handle daily vacation rental operations. Read the case study to see how it works–and how you can replicate Vernon’s success.
Focus on buyer leads
As mentioned, it’s easier to get buyers to purchase a house than to get someone to sell their property. If you’re looking to close your first real estate deal, you should find people who are willing to buy a property.
Nurture those leads by listening to their needs and adding value for your real estate clients. For example, by being there when they need you (e.g, helping them lift boxes on move-in day) instead of less valuable gestures like buying them a bottle of champagne.
Maintaining the relationship with your clients even after the sale will allow you to get more clients coming from referrals.
“Farm” the local area
Farming is a marketing technique used by successful real estate agents that involves taking care of your leads to get them to buy or sell. On a farm, you prepare the soil, select the seeds, apply manure, harvest when it’s time, and store the product.
Farming in real estate means:
- Sending direct emails to your prospects
- Knocking on doors
- Cold calling
- Mailing postcards and gifts
- Sharing real estate market data
- Placing retargeted ads
The aim is to generate and nurture leads until they’re ready to buy or sell properties.
Target buyers at the top of the funnel
Partner with local builders as part of your lead generation strategy and capture potential buyers or sellers at the very beginning.
The sales funnel is a marketing concept that explains the different stages a lead goes through to make a purchase. As a real estate agent, it’s really important that you capture those leads at the top of the funnel: people who may be thinking of buying or selling a property and are only starting to research. That way, you can capture their attention and build relationships with them from the very beginning.
To find prospects at the top of the funnel, network with builders, property managers, and lenders. That way, you can find people who are:
- Asking quotes for builders on renovations and fixer-uppers
- Ending a lease because they’re planning on buying property
- At the end of their lease and have expressed an interest in purchasing the property
This will allow you to have an on-going lead generation process and a referral network.
Promote other agents’ listings
The real estate industry works on relationships. Being friendly and bubbly doesn’t necessarily make you a good agent, but it can help to build trust and connections.
Those relationships can put you in a good position to take on someone else’s portfolio if they move to a different city. Also, to build win-win partnerships and lifelong friendships. Promoting other agents’ listings, like putting on an open house for them, will help sell the property faster—and you’ll get to meet new potential homebuyers.
Work on your sales skills
Selling real estate is not easy. You’re working with a very expensive product that, in many cases, will change the buyer’s life. You need to hone your sales skills not only to get prospects but also to get them to buy. Some of the most crucial skills that you need to work on include:
- Listening actively. You need to learn how to truly listen and understand what your client is saying, but also, pay close attention to their actions. For example, if they tell you that they don’t want a big kitchen, but then complain about the size in every house you show them, you’ll know to start looking for places with bigger kitchens.
- Being knowledgeable. As a realtor you should always know two things when showing a listing: i) facts about the neighborhood, ii) what the next steps are if they decide to purchase the property. This also means mixing the knowledge you have from the client with the info you gather from the listing. E.g. if they want to move in three months but the property won’t be available for three and a half, your clients should know.
- Becoming a teacher. You need to learn how to explain complex concepts in a simple way to get your clients to trust you and value your advice. This is especially valuable for first-time buyers.
- Being a straight talker. Sometimes clients will take longer than expected to make a decision. You need to be determined enough to tell it like it is if they’re about to lose a place because they haven’t made a decision.
- Gaining their trust. You’ll get the trust of your clients if you show up on time, show them properties that fit their requirements, know a lot about the neighborhood, paperwork, and regulations, and are willing to teach them about those things.
Work your network
Apart from joining the NAR and building relationships with other realtors, it’s important that you tap into your already existing network. Tell your friends, family, and acquaintances that you’re now a realtor and ask them to refer you to others.
Join your local association or realtors, contact your friends and family, and partner with other agents to help you accelerate your first sale.
2. Maximize the value in every relationship
As a realtor, you need to ensure you’re providing maximum value to your clients before, during, and after the sale. That effort will come back to you in the form of referrals or life-long business relationships (many clients sell their property years later or buy a second home so it pays to nurture them down the years).
Providing maximum value doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll need to do many additional tasks. It’s about optimizing the work you’re already doing and tailoring your actions to what they find important. To increase the perceived value of your actions:
- Maintain ongoing relationships with clients
- Partner with a mentor
- Provide unique value
- Have a side hustle
Maintain ongoing relationships with clients
Your relationship with clients doesn’t end when you hand them the keys to their new place and they become homeowners. It also doesn’t mean that you’ll bombard them with text messages, phone calls, or daily emails.
Instead, you can get a customer relationship manager (CRM) and create an email list of former clients. You can segment it by interests, neighborhoods, number of kids, or any other category. Then, you can come up with an outreach strategy where you share relevant information like market trends reports or local news.
For example, if you have a group of owners that bought the property for real estate investing and property appreciation, you can send them the news like upcoming openings of new town attractions.
Partner with a mentor
If you’re working for a broker, you can find a mentor within the same brokerage. A good initiative is to find a more experienced agent who might be offloading responsibilities and is willing to share their knowledge and workload. If you’re an independent realtor, you can find a mentor who’s a member of your local association of realtors.
Either way, ask if you can shadow them on listings and share best practices for reaching out to leads and former clients.
Find a mentor within the same brokerage that can advise you and share their workload with you.
Provide unique value
As a realtor, you should have something that makes you stand out from the crowd. That’s your unique value. Finding out what it is and working on sharpening it will speed up the branding process and help you gain authority.
For example, let’s say your unique value is that you’re always one step ahead and are also extremely fun to be around. Your clients will value that you listen and take action, and also bring a little lighthearted relief to the stressful process of house buying.
But your unique value can also come from something you offer. For example, if your client is buying property for rent, you can either help find renters and get a commission or offer to run their short-term rental business for them.
Running a vacation rental doesn’t mean you’ll need to learn everything about the market and answer guests at 3 am—not if you partner with Jetstream.
Jetstream gives you access to a team of experts that use top-notch hospitality technology to manage your STR operations remotely. You only need to connect us to contractors that will do the boots-on-the-ground work like cleaning. So you and your client will both be making stable, passive income without much additional effort.
Jessica Larsen, licensed real estate agent in Cape Cod, explains how she grew her business and adds value to her clients using Jetstream and its channel distribution technology.
Have a side hustle
Even if you’re the best salesperson and have great connections, it takes time to close your first deal. You might be thinking of taking on some side hustles in the beginning so you can sustain yourself.
If you choose a side hustle related to being a realtor, you can then leverage that knowledge to grow your business. Some side jobs for real estate agents that you can do part-time at the beginning of your real estate career include:
- Real estate photography
- Real estate blogging
- Streaming real estate content on a YouTube channel
- Home decorating and staging
- Landscaping
- Cleaning or maintenance services
- Social media marketing
- Managing short term rentals
Find owners who want to furnish their properties and turn them into a short-term rental business that you can manage for them.
If you choose to manage other people’s vacation rental properties, you can partner up with Jetstream and we’ll:
- Manage 24/7 guest multilingual communications
- Schedule cleaners and maintenance workers
- Boost your listings on different booking sites
- Write the copy for each property listing
- Adjust prices to meet demand and avoid leaving money on the table
You’ll only need to provide us with great, professional photography and give us the contact information of your cleaners and other contractors. We’ll handle the rest. Plus, if you choose to manage vacation rentals, you’ll be able to gain a passive steady income before and even after your real estate business starts booming.
Ready to make money quick as a new real estate agent?
Now that you have a real estate license, it may take three to six months to start making money from commissions. However, some people say it will take at least a year and a half to make a living out of real estate alone.
When you start as a new real estate agent, you can make money from commissions or by doing other real estate tangential tasks and jobs.
You also need to set the ground for future success. So you should accelerate your sales process by:
- Focusing on buyers and not sellers
- Working on your personal branding and referral network
- Joining your local realtor’s association
- Partnering with other agents, lenders, property managers, and builders
But you also need to work on increasing your value for short and long term reward by:
- Maintaining relationships with clients before, during, and after the sale
- Partnering with a mentor
- Defining your unique value proposition
- Having a side hustle
Managing your client’s short-term rental businesses is a great way to add more value for them and generate stable passive income for both of you. Just outsource the day-to-day management to Jetstream and start enjoying a monthly income without lifting a finger.
Frequently asked questions about how to make money quick as a new real estate agent
How do beginner real estate agents make money?
Beginner real estate agents can make money from:
- Commissions (this takes between 3-6 months)
- Working on real estate transaction services like marketing, legal, and repairs
- Having a side hustle, like managing short-term rentals
What is the fastest way to make money as a real estate agent?
The fastest way to make money as a real estate agent is to nurture buyer leads. However, getting your first client to buy a property can take three to six months.
A good way to make money fast while you wait on your first commission, or right after it, is to manage short-term rentals (STR). As a realtor, you can partner with a vacation rental marketing and distribution agency like Jetstream. We handle the daily operations while you and your client get a passive monthly income without much additional work.
Can you make money in your first year in real estate?
You can make money in your first year as a real estate agent. You can do it by earning commissions or having a related side hustle like managing short-term rentals. However, if you’re planning on making a living out of real estate alone, that will take 18 months on average.
What should a new real estate agent do in the first 30 days?
These are the things a new real estate agent should do in the first 30 days after getting their license:
- Tell friends and family that you’re a realtor
- Join your local realtors’ association
- Market yourself online and offline
