Real estate is a popular profession among people who look for independence, scalability, and long-term growth with a business. While the opportunities are real, entering the real estate market and starting from ground zero does come with its own challenges. Aspiring realtors and professionals often struggle with multiple licensing rules, market jargon, networking, market research, etc.

Thus, figuring out ‘how to get into real estate’ feels harder than the work itself. But the good news is that it is possible to overcome these challenges if you have a clear roadmap that provides you with the foundational knowledge covering educational requirements, license, branding, and a complete professional setup. 

A well-defined roadmap can help you drive from zero experience to closing your first deal in the real estate market. Let’s learn how.

Quick Summary

This guide offers high leverage roadmap on how to get into real estate. We cut out theory and get down to eligibility, market research, and lead creation. Learn these fundamental pillars and be professional in your approach to the first acquisition with reduced risk and accuracy.

Real Estate Agent Requirements 

Whether you want to become a real estate agent, consultant, or broker, having sufficient knowledge about real estate, licenses, and other requirements is necessary. Let’s discuss some of the important real estate education requirements:

• Minimum Age: The minimum age is 18 years old, though some states might have different requirements. 
• Educational Qualification: Must have a high school diploma, a bachelor's degree in real estate or business (however, not mandatory in several states).
• License and Certifications: Some states demand a pre-licensing course completion. Also, to become a registered real estate agent, you need a local license.  And to become a global real estate agent, you need international certifications like Certified International Property Specialist (CIPS).

These requirements help to make sure that people who enter the sphere of real estate have a strong background and are ready to cope with the intricacies of the field.

Roadmap to Becoming a Successful Real Estate Agent

Before you get into the real estate market, defining a clear roadmap that guides you each step is important. Especially when you are starting a real estate business from zero (that means having limited knowledge and no experience), a successful roadmap can help you in addressing challenges, dealing with clients, and actually crack your first deal while ensuring you make profits. 

The following roadmap, which is divided into multiple steps, can help you understand what to focus on at each stage of your real estate journey, from foundation to getting a deal. 

1. Understand Your Niche

Since we now know about the requirements and education qualifications for becoming a real estate agent, let’s start our journey by stepping into the real estate market as a licensed real estate agent.

Most new agents try to capture the whole real estate market. You must understand that before grabbing a whale, you need to have experience catching small fish. This simply means that if you want to become a successful real estate agent who has experience in working with every type of real estate, such as workspace, residential, rentals, small to big apartments, or even acres of plot, you need to focus and start with a niche. 

For that, identify small or micro markets, such as starting with only rental apartments, or dealing with small office spaces. The idea is to start with small goals to make bigger deals gradually.

2. Identify the Target Audience

You have identified your niches, but the audience you are targeting, that also needs to be explored and understood. For example, if you are starting with dealing with small residential apartments or homes, then your target audience can be working professionals who might be looking for apartments for rent. Similarly, if you have deals for small office spaces, connecting with a startup company might be fruitful, as they might need a small space to setup their office.

3. Building Professional Identity

When you enter the real estate market as an agent, every day you need to connect with multiple property buyers, sellers, or investors. While you evaluate your clients regarding their expectations from real estate property, the clients also evaluate you on the basis of your professional identity and experience. That means, for you to create a reliable and trustworthy impression on your clients, you must have a professional identity. So, how to create it?

• Through a professional email address

In real estate, how you connect and communicate with people helps in establishing your professional image. So, to create a professional first impression, you need a business email. A business email with a custom email domain can immediately signal credibility when dealing with property owners or clients.

• Through a credible website

Most clients want to know about the real estate agent before they actually connect or reply to your services. And to do this, the most convenient and easy way is through a website. Your clients would like to know what type of real estate services you offer, which areas you cater to, and how to contact you, all through your website.

Since you are just starting, you might not be catering to multiple cities, regions, or areas, or offering services in different types of properties. But creating a simple website or a one-page website that highlights your current services, areas, and contact information could significantly improve your response rate.

4. Start Generating Leads

Generating leads does not have to be complex or expensive, especially when you are in your early stages of becoming an experienced real estate agent. Here’s how you can generate leads smartly:

• Networking‍

Attend local real estate property events and network with people interested in buying, selling, or renting properties.

• Online property portals

Most people today post their property requirements on online property portals, visit these portals, and identify leads for whom you can offer good deals. You can also check real estate lead generation websites from where you can get high-quality leads.

• Mortgage brokers and lawyers

‍Connecting with a mortgage broker and lawyers can also help you find customers. Many people approach mortgage brokers and lawyers to discuss their loan eligibility, and these professionals often recommend trusted real estate agents to help people make the right move.

• Getting leads through your website

Engaging people on your website for a long time can help you get leads. To achieve this, you need to transform your basic website into a lead-generation website. You can do this by:

• Adding lead magnets such as educational or valuable resources like an eBook, downloadable materials like a research study, etc., on your website. When customers access or download any of these resources (lead magnet), they will have to provide their contact information in exchange. This way, you will get your lead details while the customer gets the useful information. 
• Enhancing your website by making it more SEO-friendly. Try adding local keywords in your website content, case studies, or blogs. This will boost your ranking on local search engines. You can take help from AI-powered tools, such as AI content generation, for drafting interesting content for your website.
• Adding contact forms on your websites is a direct way of getting lead details. But only insert high-converting contact forms wherever necessary, as asking for contact details on every page or section can lead to people leaving your website.  

5. Become a Brand, Not Just an Agent

Many enter the real estate world thinking their brokerage’s name will do the heavy lifting. But clients don’t choose logos, they choose people. So, you’ll want to make the move from agent to entrepreneur.

Becoming a brand means being intentional about how you’re seen, remembered, and referred to. Think of your real estate branding as your reputation in surround sound - the vibe people get when they see your content, hear your name, or meet you in person. 

So, focus on:

• Adding client testimonials to your website.
• Creating a unique value proposition about communicating and sharing about the services that differentiate you from other real estate agents.
• Establishing a consistent social media presence, such as replying to comments, answering user queries, sharing new projects, and promoting attractive properties through social media posts.

6. Sharpen Your Numbers and Skills

Many professionals focus heavily on lead generation, listings, and client service (which are essential), but what separates thriving agents from surviving ones is mastering the numbers and the business skills of the real estate industry.

Every real estate buyer or seller, except a real estate agent, who understands the pricing and risks with each property investment. So, understanding the following numbers becomes critical:

• Cost breakdowns such as taxes, commissions, and maintenance costs.
• Knowledge of CMA (Comparable market analysis).
• Rental yield calculations.
• Finance basics.

While having the knowledge of real estate numbers on your fingertips can boost confidence, having proper business skills can help you position yourself as a leader in the real estate market: 

• Be strategic instead of reactive.
• Make decisions with intention and data.
• Invest in tools and training that compound your success.
• Build a business that serves your life. Profits are always appreciated, but be ready to face the financial crunches too.  Property rates can fluctuate, deals may slow-down, and markets can shift unexpectedly.
• Remember, your areas for improvement should not prevent you from learning how to become a successful real estate agent. Instead, seek continuing education (CE) courses, get additional brokerage training, or speak with a mentor about honing the skills you need to improve.

7. Get Ready to Close Your First Deal 

Now that you are ready with a complete market understanding and real estate knowledge and skills, your first deal is likely to come in no time.

When you are finally working to close a deal, remember the following points:

• Communicate clearly about the real estate agreement from pricing, lease or duration, owners, commissions, rental transfers, payment mode, etc.
• Document everything you discuss with your client; this helps in keeping track of the points discussed and if anything is missed.
• Perform regular follow-up with the client. Any delay in communication can lead to dropping a good deal.
• If there are any risks with the property deal, stay transparent about it, and inform them about the risks accordingly.

Once you finalize the deal and get done with it, analyze:

• How well did you perform in closing the deal?
• What efforts did you make to make it successful?
• Where could you have done better to close the deal fast?
• Now that you have experience closing a deal in your niche, which markets can you explore and expand?

Self-analyzing such questions will help you boost confidence and give you the vigour to close more deals successfully.

How to Use Neo to Scale Beyond Your First Deal?

Closing your first deal is your first milestone, but you need to scale to go beyond and close more profitable deals in real estate. As discussed previously, while education, experience, and skills matter, your digital presence equally plays an important role in generating leads and building a strong professional presence. In this realm, Neo can be your all-in-one solution to build a dynamic online presence in the real estate market. 

It allows you to build an attractive real estate website using AI in a matter of seconds. Here’s how you can build a real estate webpage or a full website using Neo Sites.

1. Click ‘Try it yourself for free’.

2. You will be asked to tell about the industry for which you want to build a website. Select the relevant real estate category from the drop-down list. Then click on ‘Continue’.

3. On this page, you will be asked to describe your idea of the website. Enter the description related to what type of website you want, describing your services or offerings. Then click on ‘Generate Site’.

4. Neo Sites will use its AI capabilities to build a real estate website as you described. Select from the available website design options and click on ‘Edit this design’. 

5. You will be asked to create your customer account before making edits. Enter the required information and move to customizing your website according to your preferences, such as layouts, fonts, themes, colors, etc.

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Once you are done editing, you will be able to launch your website using a custom domain.

You can also create a professional email address for your real estate business. Here’s how you can create a customized business email using Neo Mail:

1. Click on the ‘Get Started’ button.

2. On the next page, enter the preferred domain for creating a real estate professional email. If you have an already existing domain, select ‘Use a domain I own’. Or, enter the domain name you like in the box.

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3. When you enter the domain name, Neo Mail will automatically add a free (.co.site) extension to it. Click on ‘Continue’ to use this domain name.

4. Next, create your customer account.

Once done, you can create your admin professional email address for your real estate agent identity, such as yourname@modernrealestate.co.site. Further, if you have any team members or other professionals working with you, then you can create email addresses for them also. 

You can also make use of several email management functions provided by Neo Mail on its platform.This includes read receipts, setting inbox rules, email campaign, priority rules, AI smart write, email signature, Neo bookings, etc.

Conclusion

Learning how to become a successful real estate agent may seem simple, but it requires much dedication and strategy. You’ll give yourself the best chances of success by following the roadmap in this guide, understanding the market and your niche, building a strong professional presence, networking for leads, and enhancing your skills to close your first deal. 

In this roadmap from zero to success, you will face multiple challenges, but taking help from technology such as website building and email tools, learning from experts, or improving your skills can gradually lead to successfully grabbing more profitable real estate deals. 

FAQs

1. Is it hard to become successful in real estate?

Becoming a successful real estate agent takes dedication. If you are willing to put in the time and effort to improve your real estate skills, bounce back from rejection, and follow a clear roadmap to close a deal, getting successful can become easier.

2. What are the chances of becoming a successful real estate agent?

The chances of becoming a successful real estate agent depend on multiple factors, including your location, work ethic, skills, personality, training, and support system. Statistically, many new agents struggle. However, with the right strategies and mindset, success is absolutely achievable.

3. How do you survive your first year in real estate?

It will come down to your preparation and growth. You need to have a few months of expenses saved up for the beginning of your career so that you can focus on growth — growing your network, leads, clientele, marketing tools, and real estate knowledge.

4. How to make $100,000 your first year in real estate?

To make $100,000 in your first year, you need to treat it like a full-time business. Start by understanding how much you need to produce in sales (i.e., how many transactions you need in the year to get that $100,000) and joining a brokerage that provides quality training and mentorship. Then, commit to generating leads daily, with a focus on building real relationships and following up persistently. With discipline and daily action, closing $100,000 worth of deals in your first year (depending on your market and average commission) is achievable.

5. What do most realtors struggle with?

Most realtors struggle with consistently generating and converting leads, especially in competitive or slow markets. Time management may also be a challenge, as maintaining follow-ups, paperwork, client communication, and marketing can be overwhelming.