Property Agents make A LOT of Money

to a simple agent:

I strongly support yr statement, being a agent is more than just getting sellers to sell, buyers to buy. All the background work, preparation, arrangement and timing coordination roles are very time consuming.

In the long run, I will say being in the top management, providing new agents training, motivation, coaching and direction, reaping a reasonable overiding commision is definitely justifiable.

to P-values:

Thanks for the support. I am still green in this line (coming to 1 year as full time agent). But I thought that I should really share my experience before anyone like me who have no clues about WAT WE ARE IN FOR.
I am not in any management position yet but I know that in order to reach that level, definitely, we sacrifice our precious time to coach new agent instead of doing our own closing. (It so much more $ to earn the deal ourselves) So I feel that our management still deserve some overriding.
Actually,since day 1, I am rather independent as my manager didn't really help me a lot. (He just accompany one viewing and that's it) I source for my own listing and I learn a lot from my own mistakes and solve my own problems.
Sometimes, it's more irritating that my own manager don't even know how to solve my problem as they have never handle such deals before. It's quite sad.
Anyway, I have happy to be who and where I am now and most important that this job beside $ gives me a lot of fulfillment.

-to simple agent:

You head becomes harder after knocking the wall yourself for a few time. Soon enuf you dont need a helmet (you manager).

Cheers!

Does a real estate agent need to contribute CPF compulsorily? Cos how does MOM get the figure if agents do not have to contribute CPF ( or declare taxes)?

Definately better than being an insurance agent, haha...

Simple Agent,

Can we keep in touch?

You can email me at czp82@msn.com

I am contemplating of doing full-time and would like to seek your advise.

I was a real estate agent and I used to make about 20k every month. But we agents like to tell people the gross income. But to make 20k, the cost is about 40-50% of gross, so this makes me make 10k only. But I like to tell people I make 20k.

Referring to the earlier post of top 25% makes average of 4k, this is true. The top 3% makes 70% of the top 25%'s income. For example, if you are in ERA and not in top 100, then you might as well get a regular job. It's less tiring. Because to make 5k a month, you need about 10k gross to be safe. This means 2-3 houses every month. To sell 2, you need to be marketing 10, and for 10 you need to be meeting 20 new buyers/sellers every month, and to get there, you need to throw 100,000 flyers and advertise at least twice weekly. For 5k, I'll rather be an employee. For those who are superagents, either they work 2 times as hard to make 20k (40k gross, and hence tell people they make 480k a year), or their conversion rates are better.

but it is a still a good business to be in. It's quite fun. If I close down my current business, I may return to real estate line.

To ERA Man,

May I know how many years were you in real estate business?

Also since it's a good biz to you, possibly what are the good reasons to make you quit during that time?

I was in real estate for 2.5 years
Then I went to China to start an education business. I was thinking forward to about 10 years later when I want to return to Singapore.

Real estate is good biz, but your evenings are always not with your family. You have to reserve it for house viewings. But in the day, quite free. For me, family is important too. So I looked for another opportunity. And then China looked attractive at that point in time. So I dived in to try. Though I did not do education business first. I was in general trading first, then education. I'm quite happy now. China is a crazy place.

Ya, I agree with you that family is important to me. Thus sometime, I felt so guilty when I was so busy closing my deals and going for house viewings.

I have also given myself about another 2 years in this biz (though I enjoy the challenges that I am having right now) to start my own biz. I love to have passive income to support me so that I can allocate more time to spend with my kids. They are very young and I wish to spend more time with them.

Actually I have no regrets to be a property agent and aim to be respected to be a good and professional one. (though many times, we can be play out by others.....)