What are the pros and cons of the profession of real estate agent?
Yes, the training required to get a real estate license is ridiculously low in most (all?) states. This may (in part) explain the outrageous turnover in this business, where more than half of all newly licensed agents do not survive long enough to renew their licenses (two years max). (The real estate salesperson exam is a joke, and the courses needed to take it are simple to the point of being insulting, even though Washington has a reputation of being one of the tougher states.) Most successful agents either voluntarily complete additional training, work with a mentor in an “apprenticeship” situation, or both. The large, chain brokerages tend to operate on a volume basis, where they have lots of agents, most of whom are just doing very little, if anything other than paying brokerage fees. They’ll have five agents doing well, maybe ten that are making a living, and a hundred that are only doing one or two transactions in the entire time with the agency. The agents in that last group c
