Business

A Career in Real Estate

Robert Reffkin

Lesson time 11:41 min

Robert offers an introduction and career tips for those interested in working in the real estate industry as an entrepreneur or a real estate agent.

Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars

Topics include: Should I Become an Agent? · New Technologies, New Opportunities · No One Succeeds Alone

Preview

[MUSIC PLAYING] - The real estate industry is the largest industry in the world. It's the largest asset class and many times larger than the global stock market. The real estate industry consists of land, residential, commercial, and industrial. Land is open land. Residential is places where you live. Commercial are places where you work, and industrial are manufacturing plants. Real estate defines the environments in which we live and work. It's the economics of physical space. And there's not a moment that you can actually see-- where you're not seeing real estate. So it really is everywhere, and it is real. One of the nice things about real estate is you can feel it and touch it, and you know it really, really matters. And so whether or not you're a buyer or a seller, real estate investor, real estate developer, a technologist, entrepreneur, it is a particularly fun area to spend your time and invest in because you can look back and say that what you did truly matters. I'm very passionate about real estate because it's an industry of dreamers. You have real estate agents. You have buyers. You have sellers. You have commercial brokers, residential. You have software providers of all different sorts. You have brokerage firms. It's all these people that are coming from different places-- all different types of places, all different types of industries and companies and designers and market people, real estate, engineers-- to come together, mix it up, and build. There's so much opportunity to create better. [MUSIC PLAYING] If you're thinking about becoming a real estate agent, here are a few points to consider. One is, it is not as easy as you think. It is a relationship business where you are actually building a book of business. What that means is you have to have a client database of people that will become repeat clients and refer clients to you. And it's hard to start when you're competing against people that have been doing this for 20 years, and every year, sell 100 homes. So that's a hard thing, to say work with me versus that person. So if you're thinking about starting, I highly recommend that you join someone's team so you can learn under their experience and build your client database with that credibility. On the positive side, you should know that you currently know everyone that you need to be successful. That is a fact. Because you have enough friends where if you service them well, they're going to refer others to you. And that's how you'll build your business. And so you have what you need to be successful. You just need to be good at dealing with rejection, learning under someone who has done it before, realizing it's not going to happen overnight, and really committing yourself to serving your client over the actual transaction. Their needs matter more than getting a transaction done. People that are too transaction-oriented where it just feels like that, that doesn't feel good to anyb...

About the Instructor

As the CEO and founder of Compass, Robert Reffkin has used modern technology to revolutionize the real estate industry in the U.S. Now he’s demystifying the ins and outs of the American home-buying process and sharing tools that will help you buy or sell a home with confidence. Learn how to approach your search, choose an agent, make an offer, and more. Your future home is waiting—let Robert help you find it.

Featured MasterClass Instructor

Robert Reffkin

Robert Reffkin, the founder and CEO of Compass, helps you get closer to finding your dream home by simplifying and demystifying real estate.

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