Four Things that SUCK in Real Estate (and Four Strategies That Help)

Building a successful career in real estate requires a lot from you. It takes strategy to navigate the everyday challenges agents face. If you're going to be in real estate in the long term, it’s essential to identify what you don’t like about the job and work to find solutions – THAT’S how you maintain a good mindset (even on your most brutal weeks). We’re here to help with four pro tips for real estate agents!

• Being “on” 24/7. As agents, our schedules revolve around our clients. There’s a lot of pressure to be present when clients need you, which makes it easy for some agents to bulldoze their own boundaries. If you have a family or other obligations on top of work (and we know you do), you already know that making time for yourself can feel impossible.

• • Tiffany and Ashlee’s Tip: Set expectations with your clients from the beginning. You don’t need to answer the phone after 9 PM, and you can set up your weekend schedule around your other obligations. Reasonable boundaries are healthy!

• Clients don’t always take your advice. You’re hired to support your clients and help them achieve their dreams, and you bring your experience and education to the table. So why don’t clients always listen despite your expertise? Short answer: EMOTIONS. Your client’s emotions will probably come into play as they prepare to make significant, life-changing decisions.

• • Tiffany and Ashlee’s Tip: Get to the root of those emotions! Is your client afraid of making a big mistake? Are they heartbroken over selling their grandmother’s house? You don’t need to know their life story, but knowing the cause of their emotions can help you work with them from an empathetic perspective.

• The commission-based income rollercoaster. If you’ve been in the industry for more than a few years, you know exactly what we’re talking about. Some years, you’ve got more clients than you know what to do with. Other years, crickets and tumbleweeds.

• • Tiffany and Ashlee’s Tip: As Tiffany puts it, “be ready to not make money for a year.” In your first year, you probably won’t take much, if anything, home. You have to decide whether you can support that financially. If you can, then during your slow months, take the time to invest in systems that will help you down the road when you have clients coming out of your ears.

• Housing inspections gone wrong. It’s so frustrating to get to the point where your client is investing in a home inspection and then find out there are tons of problems with the house. Your clients are going to be emotional, and you might be too! You will be the one to help your client regulate their emotions so they don’t make a snap decision they’ll regret.

• • Tiffany and Ashlee’s Tip: Talk to the inspector to find out how bad the problems really are. Are they just minor repairs? Or is it back to the drawing board? The inspector is the expert and they can help clients understand more about the situation. Once you and your clients have all the info, take 24 hours to reflect, process, and think of your next step. The deal might not be dead!

We love our jobs - getting to transform lives by helping people is a dream come true! But NO job is perfect. We hope these tips can help you with some of the things that SUCK about real estate so that you can get back to enjoying all the amazing things that being an agent has to offer!

For more fabulous tips (and relatable rants), check out Episode 024 of the Realestatable Podcast: "Things That Suck in Real Estate"!