Stuart Chng5 Career Paths As A Property Agent
Updated: Mar 19
Discover the possibilities of exciting and rewarding real estate career paths!
A career as a real estate agent involves you starting out on a sales path and chalking up experience before choosing between remaining just sales focused or embarking on leadership and management roles.
Whether you're a fervent property salesperson or someone who enjoys leading and mentoring others, the choice is yours to pursue your passion.
In leadership roles, you will be engaged in recruitment, team building and training roles, project IC roles or even a hybrid of all.
Salesperson role
A focus on sales means your income is derived purely from brokering property transactions.
The typical property agent's career path begins by focusing on pure sales in selected segments like HDB, new launches, resale condominiums, landed or commercial properties.
Experience in sales and the multiple facets of our industry such as negotiations, prospecting and marketing and client portfolio management prepares you for a future career in management and team leading as you will know exactly what your sales people need and be able to walk the talk with them.
However, being a top sales agent does not automatically make you a top leader. There are different of skills involved which you would have to hone such as:
Mentoring skills to help your agents achieve their peak potential
Conflict resolution skills
Coaching skills such as overcoming mindset or behavioral issues
Management skills as you would need to learn to trust people and delegate tasks
Consulting skills so you are able to spot areas for improvement and propose strategies to overcome them
A career path in team leading is optional and some agents choose to focus purely on sales for the entire lifespan of their careers.
Team Leader role
A focus on leadership & management means your income is derived through team building, mentoring agents and business management.
In leadership and management roles, you will begin recruiting and training agents on the skill sets and systems that you have developed over the course of your sales career.
No one steps into a leadership and management role fresh from taking their RES exams and it takes time to hone a wide breadth of skills necessary to coach and mentor others.
For some, it is a natural extension of their passions in teaching and they may find team leading far more satisfying and meaningful than a pure sales career.
For this, there is no right or wrong path.
Only what feels most natural and appeals to you as everyone has different strengths and passions.
I have personally witnessed ex-teachers who became great sales people but were most engaged and fulfilled in their roles as trainers and mentors to their team.
The benefits of a management career is how it creates something akin to a semi-passive income as you get paid for every deal done by your team and are able to scale much more than if you were relying only on your own effort.
As such, you could be on a month long holiday and still be paid daily without being present.
That said, it does not mean there's little work involved (Why i call it semi-passive).