Garden State Real Estate Academy is the real estate school of choice for thousands of people who want to get a NJ or PA real estate license. But after they graduate from the 75-hours of real estate classes and get their real estate license, the question arises: what’s next?
Real estate is a vast and varied profession. It offers a career where the real estate agent can become a generalist or become a specialist in several niche real estate sub-specialties.
The Generalist.
Many real estate school graduates start their careers the way they will continue them: they will take on just about any opportunity that presents itself. They figure they can deal with condos in Mount Laurel and Jersey Shore clients and if they have buyers who want commercial investment properties, they’ll take care of them too.
Mobile homes? No problem!
Wanna buy a time share? Call me!
A farmer wants to list his land that could be marketed to a developer. Yeh, I can do that!
I specialize in everything!
The benefit of becoming a generalist is that the world opens up far more opportunities to earn a commission. There is only one type of real estate license in New Jersey and Pennsylvania when it comes to the sort of real estate you can sell.
The argument against this decision is that certain types of real estate require special knowledge in that niche. The real estate commission could come down hard on an agent who gives bad advice, or who demonstrates incompetence while representing a client in a special market niche such as commercial real estate or property management.
Once the new real estate agent has gained some initial experience, they might want to consider becoming the “big fish in the small pond” by creating a reputation as the “go-to” agent with valuable expertise in a certain niche within the real estate market. This could include:
The Military Buyer Specialist.
New Jersey has tens of thousands of active-duty military personnel. Thousands of them are transferred to and from bases such as Maguire Air Force Base, Fort Dix, and the Cape May Coast Guard station every year. Many of them are given generous housing allowances that allow them to buy off-base housing. Military buyers usually have top-grade credit and by qualifying for VA mortgages, they can buy a home with no money down.
Of course, when those buyers get deployed to another base a few years down the road, they also become real estate seller clients.
Military clients also associate with other members of the military, so a great real estate agent who has provided superb service to a Armed Forces member is likely to be recommended to future military buyers and sellers.
The National Association of Realtors® offers a designation called the MRP, or Military Relocation Professional. According to NAR, “The Military Relocation Professional (MRP) certification is for real estate professionals who want to work with current and former military service members. The MRP certification program educates REALTORS® about working with U.S. servicemembers and their families and veterans to find the housing solutions that best suit their needs and to take full advantage of available benefits and support.”
The Senior Citizen Specialist.
One of the largest segments of the real estate market is older clients who want to downsize. They may want to move to a one-level home to avoid stairs; they may want to move to be closer to their adult children and grandchildren, they may want to leave the large home where they raised their family and move to an adults-only community.
Thus, a real estate agent who develops a reputation for serving seniors often has the opportunity to help their clients both sell their current home and then buy a new one.
A real estate agent who wants to specialize in this niche needs to understand their clients. There are often strong emotional ties to the home where they have decades of happy memories of raising their family. They may have lost a spouse and leaving the home will appear to cut some of those beloved memories also. The whole process of moving often seems bewildering—and scary—to seniors.
One of the biggest concerns seniors have when downsizing to an apartment or adults-only community is what to keep and how to fit their most precious memorabilia and furniture into the smaller rooms in the new home. Moving from a large four-bedroom detached house to a two-bedroom home with no basement or attic can be an enormous challenge. A good real estate agent will have expertise in staging and should have connections with a downsizing specialist who helps senior citizens in this type of move.
Again, NAR offers a designation called SRES: a Seniors Real Estate Specialist, which it says, “. . . is for REALTORS® who want to be able to meet the special needs of maturing Americans when selling, buying, relocating, or refinancing residential or investment properties. By earning the SRES® designation, REALTORS® are prepared to approach mature clients with the best options and information for them to make life-changing decisions.”
The First-time Homebuyer Specialist.
One of the greatest potential markets for real estate agents is people who want to buy their first home. A person who finishes real estate school and starts their real estate career in their twenties or thirties also probably has a sphere of influence that includes many friends who are thinking about buying or renting their first home.
A guest presenter at our recent real estate class told students how he as a mortgage loan officer often helps new real estate agents hold first-time homebuyer seminars, invited from nearby apartment complexes and how this frequently results in leads for the agents finding buyer clients.
An agent who specializes in this niche should be able to communicate the steps to buying a home, should know about any incentive programs for first-time homebuyer loans, and be able to hold the client’s hand through what seems to them to be a confusing—sometimes scary—process.
The Commercial Real Estate Specialist.
Commercial real estate is a large, varied, and sometimes complex field. It can include sales and leasing of:
- Office space.
- Retail stores.
- Specialty properties, such as medical facilities, hotels, and self-storage units.
- Investment properties.
Some real estate agents dabble in commercial property while with a typical local or national franchise broker such as Better Homes & Gardens Realty or Century 21. They might manage small office leases or the sale of a local office or retail building. But the agent who wants to build a career as a serious, focused commercial specialist should consider joining one of the large brokerages that concentrate exclusively on the commercial field.
These firms—such names as NAI, CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield—have high entry standards for new real estate agents. They typically require a college degree in a business major such as economics or marketing.
The commercial field is quite different from residential real estate. Transactions—and therefore, commissions—tend to be larger. They often take much longer to put together. Commercial agents usually work during business hours from Monday to Friday.
Regardless of your ultimate intent on whether to become a real estate specialist or generalist, it all starts with getting your real estate license! Garden State Real Estate Academy is the state’s top-rated real estate school. We offer in-person real estate classes and online real estate classes with live instructors and offer self-study real estate licensing courses where you can take the entire course at your own pace.
For more information, call us at 609.923.0590 or check out the many helpful tips at www.GSREacademy.com.
David C. Forward is a licensed real estate broker and instructor and was first licensed as a Realtor® 36 years ago. During his career, David and his business partner sold more than 600 homes in South Jersey. He is now School Director of Garden Real Estate Academy, has won numerous awards for real estate sales, is a much-requested public speaker who has addressed audiences on six continents. His 20th book Zero to Hero: Winning strategies for new real estate agents to become SuperStars in their first year was released recently.
