Getting Your Real Estate License
I write a weekly guest blog post at BiggerPockets.com, the premier real estate investing website.
Check out my article there:
Investors: Should You Get Your Real Estate License?
Enjoy! And if you have any feedback, feel free to leave me comments here on over on BiggerPockets.com…
Excellent Article J Scott! I am getting my license for all those reasons you listed above. In fact I just finished the classes last week and I am taking the final licensing test tomorrow. I’ve got a few options for a brokerage to hang my license with, so that’ll be my next step.
Good luck, Scott! Let me know how the test goes!
Great points. I’ve been an investor for 4 years and I too have my real estate license. It was one of the best decisions that I made upfront in my real estate investing career!
J. Scott,
Very insightful article.
I plan to segue over to the commercial side of things once I leave the residential arena. Interestingly, every single commercial broker I have spoken with has suggested that I get a license, if for no other reason than being able to broker potential deals I happen to stumble upon. After reading your post, getting that license will probably be my next course of action.
Anthony
PS — How is the latest addition to the Scott household?;-)
Will your wife eventually get her brokers license?
Mike –
She’s counting down the months until she can… 🙂
can’t seem to find this article
Sorry…this one is being moved over to BiggerPockets.com and will be posted tomorrow (Wednesday)…
Thanks for the heads up. I thought I was losing my mind. I went over to the renew forum and had very little luck finding it. I will look again today.
thanks for this info,I’m a newbie, been looking for info about realestate, o found. your article in biggerpocket, there are really helpful, and I learn more and, I was a little bit reluctant to get my realestate license , after reading, your article it make more sense,
Hi J. Scott. I’m 19 years old. I’ve been spending some time away from college to really think about what I want for my future (the whole Bio major, one day Med school thing just wasn’t cutting it for me). I’ve always found house flipping interesting and I recently started thinking, “Hey! Maybe I can make a career out of that!” I know that it would take years before I get my start actually flipping houses, but I was just wondering if you had any tips or suggestions that I could follow now to help me get there. I really want to make a plan, I just don’t know where to start. I’d really appreciate any advice you can give me.
Hi Reyna,
As the post you commented on suggests, I would highly recommend you get your real estate license if you’re serious about investing. It will give you some momentum in the real estate world, will give you a basic education, and will provide you the tools necessary to really succeed as an investor (access to MLS, access to contracts, access to RE professionals, etc).
Once you get your license, you’ll find that a lot of the RE world will open up to you, and then you can start focusing on the investing side of things…
Hi J,
I’ve read your article on BiggerPockets several times and love it. Therefore, I have since considered this option for myself time and time again. However, the only information hard to find, in my experience, is how exactly do you find a broker who will “hang your license” for you. Is it as simple as calling up a few and asking if they’ll “hold” your license for investment purposes? Or should you try to research and speak with other investors to find brokers who will provide this service without hanging up the phone on you? It just seems like most brokers would have no real interest in holding a license for someone’s investment purposes.
I wanted to post this here as your article on BP is somewhat dated and I wasn’t sure if you would see the post…
Hope all is well and your move went smoothly! Georgia misses you already!
Thanks!
CM
Hey Chad,
In my experience, it’s more likely brokers will fight over you than hang up on you. If you’ll be doing any deals, you’ll be making them money, even if only a little. Certainly, there are some brokers who would prefer to work with agents who are going to be doing a lot of deals, but there are plenty of brokers who are happy to work with part-time agents, investors, etc. My recommendation is to ask some other investors in your area which brokers they work with (certainly some of them will be licensed), and start there. If that doesn’t work, just start calling some of the smaller ones.
Hi J,
I posted this question on the Bigger Pockets site but wanted to repost here in case you are not monitoring your old thread.
I’m trying to revive this old thread because I think it’s a really valuable one.
It’s a great article with lots of good responses, but nobody asked the question that most sticks out in my mind, and that is this:
You said, ” I have spent literally hundreds of hours on the MLS mining data to determine which areas to focus on, which types of houses to focus on, and which types of buyers to focus on.”
My questions are:
1. What type of MLS data were you mining to determine which areas to focus on?
Were you looking at sales to listing activity?
And how did that data help you to determine that you would focus on one area over another?
2. What MLS data did you use to determine what type of houses to focus on?
3. What MLS data did you use to determine which types of buyers to focus on?
Thanks a million,
Chester
Hi Chester,
I actually devoted an entire couple chapters to answer these types of questions in my “The Book on Flipping Houses.” Basically, to analyze an area, I look at several different metrics, including price ratios between distressed and retail sales, number of months of supply, buyer activity, investor activity, etc. Similar data can be used to determine what type of houses to focus on (you want to be buying/selling what owner occupants are buying).
For more detailed info, check out the books:
http://www.biggerpockets.com/flippingbook