Benefits of being a real estate agent: The people

I’ve been a full-time real estate agent for two years, and am definitely learning what I like about this career choice and what I find a bit challenging. Some of the benefits I’ve shared in previous blogs are the unlimited potential for income, the lack of a commute, and the ability to get my daily data fix. One of the most important benefits, though, are the people.

When I worked in a corporation, I met plenty of people.  Everyone I met was an employee of the same company, or were vendors of related companies.  Our most frequent interactions were all about how we could get things done in our company, and whether we could meet deadlines and financial goals and so forth.  The services we were providing were for the good of the corporation and most interactions during the performing of our job were regarding statistics and strategies and the like, so truly getting to know people was challenging, especially when running from meeting to meeting all day long.
And now I am a real estate agent, and everything we do is about the people we meet.  When we first meet a buyer or a seller, they don’t know anything about us and we don’t know anything about them. But during that first meeting, and the ones that follow, we are invited into their lives. And because we are helping them with one of the most important transactions of their lives, they often volunteer all sorts of insights to help describe what they want and why, or why they want to move and where they plan to go. It’s a unique opportunity to truly be able to assist when we understand exactly what their motivators are. And it’s a segue into making a friendship…

Because isn’t that how friendships are born?  By sharing glimpses of personal life?  By one person helping another?  Our career, that of a real estate agent, provides us the priviledge of getting to know other people and lets us help them move on to the next part of their life successfully.  For months, and sometimes longer, we are intimately connected to them, and the formality of the first call or text “Hi, this is Joe Smith and we met last week when you viewed my home,” turns into something like, “it’s me; anything new?” By the time a deal is done, and keys have passed hands, we often have a new friend.

And what about the other people we meet?  Because everything we do is about helping people, the other folks we meet in our business, whether they are inspectors or attorneys or appraisers or fellow bloggers, are also in the business of helping people. Most of us speak the same language and many of us are sharers and givers which means we make friendships just about everywhere we go.

I knew when I started this career choice that one of the reasons real estate appealed to me was the personal nature of the business. I wanted to be able to assist “real” people, not just executives at a corporation. And in this, I have succeeded. I simply love meeting new people and connecting with them, and often times, becoming friends with them. It’s what makes this career worthwhile.

One of the major benefits of being a real estate agent?   The people.