Why you shouldn't sell Real Estate part time

What's up you guys? It's Graham here. So a lot of people are asking me if they can sell real estate part-time, and my quick and short answer is probably not. It's probably not a good idea, and here's why.

You compete with people who eat, breathe, sleep, and live real estate 24/7. You're up against people who literally do nothing other than sell real estate. Do you really think you're able to compete with somebody who does real estate 24/7 all the time, every single day, when for you maybe it's like a part-time thing or you're just doing it like here and there? Probably not.

I've also found that doing real estate and being busy in real estate is a bit of a snowball effect. The busier you are, the more productive you feel, the more people you meet, the more deals you close, the more money you make, and it all tends to build on itself. So when you're doing real estate part-time, you can pretty much just cut all of that in half, and it takes a lot longer to build up that momentum to start making money and be successful. You're really gonna see a very slow progression if you just do it part-time.

The real estate market also tends to move extremely quickly, and that every single day, a new property is listed, sold, expired, canceled, withdrawn, in escrow, or price reduced. It's so important to know everything on the market every single day so that if you have a buyer who's looking, you know everything out there. Or if you have a seller who's asking you how to price something, you've already seen everything else out there, and you can accurately price a property for a quick sale.

It's also so important to know a lot of these listings in person and not just view them on a computer and like scroll through the pictures. It's so difficult to stay on top of this when you're not doing this full-time. It's also really important if you're selling real estate to have a flexible schedule. I can't even tell you this.

I have to put up with, like for instance, I get clients calling me sometimes at seven o'clock in the morning saying, "Hey, I want to see these ten homes starting at 9:00 a.m." and I have to drop whatever I’m doing and go and make those showings and make sure the buyer gets to see the homes they want to see. Same thing, like if I have a listing sometimes we're gonna call, like 8:00 a.m. from someone who's like, "Hey, we want to see this at 8:45." The buyer's only in town for like a few hours, "Can you show it to me?" The answer is yes, of course, because I'm a real estate agent and that's what I'm paid to do.

So if I'm working like 9:00 to 5:00 or if I have something else going on, I'm doing a huge disservice to the client by not being available when they are available. Honestly, so many deals can be lost if you're not available in the moment when the buyer is ready or when the seller is ready. If you're not able to do it, oftentimes what will happen is maybe they rethink it, they change their mind, they find something else, or they find an agent who is available, who can show it to them when you can't.

I also often have really weird hours. There are some days where I do nothing for the entire day and other days where I'm working like 16 hours straight from like 7:00 a.m. until like 10:00 p.m. doing showings, writing offers, negotiating deals. It is so unpredictable. Sometimes for an entire weekend I'm not doing anything and then all of a sudden on Sunday at 2:00 p.m. I get a phone call, and that changes everything. Then an hour later I'm out with the buyers showing them these amazing houses for hours, and then my whole Sunday night is gone.

But that's the nature of the business. I mean, as a real estate agent, it's pretty unpredictable in terms of what your schedule is gonna be like. Often, I can't make plans too far ahead of time because I have no idea if a buyer is gonna want to see homes or if I have maybe a listing appointment coming up and I need to be present for that. This would pretty much be impossible if I had another obligation or something else that took up my time. And like I said, a lot of my schedule is completely day-to-day, and that I don't really know what I'm doing tomorrow or the day after or the day after that. I just know I have to be available just in case a client needs me to show them properties.

This is why it's so important to be available as much as you can when you're selling real estate. It really requires a hundred percent of your attention. Also, the relationships that you have with other agents are extremely important, and oftentimes if you're doing it part-time, they're not going to take you as seriously. It's so important to build a rapport with these other agents because at the end of the day, these are the people that are gonna help get your clients in first to one of their listings, help push one of your offers through, or give you a good offer because they'd rather work with you than maybe another agent.

When you're around the other agents too, they will trust you more, and a lot of these agents are in the business for the long haul. I've done the same deals with some of the agents today that I've done deals with almost nine years ago when I first started. It helps tremendously to be on their good side, to build a rapport with them and be friends with them. They might also bring you a really strong offer to one of your own listings, and that's why it's such a good idea to be around other agents, to see them often, and it's a lot easier to do this if you're working full-time.

Doing real estate part-time is just gonna slow everything down dramatically. Now, it is possible to sell real estate part-time, and these are actually a few scenarios where I feel like it is a good idea to sell real estate part-time. The first is maybe if you're working nights or taking classes at night or doing something else at night. You're pretty open during the day. Usually for me, I'm busy until about 7:00 p.m., and then after that my nights are usually pretty open, and that's when I usually end up making YouTube videos.

So for me, it's really important just to be free during the day and then at night. But for the most part, it's really not that busy, so you pretty much have nights to do really whatever you want, if that's working a part-time job or taking classes. In fact, I usually think it's a good idea if you're just starting out in real estate to work nights because that would provide you with some pretty consistent income up until you're able to build up your real estate business, and then you can quit that and focus full-time on real estate.

The second is that maybe if you're unsure if you want to jump headfirst into real estate and you just want to try it out to make sure you enjoy it first, I totally think you should try out real estate part-time just to make sure you enjoy it. There is no sense like quitting your job, dropping out of school, moving to like Los Angeles to try real estate if you try it for like a month and you realize like, "Wait a second, this totally sucks! I'm gonna hate real estate, this is the worst career ever! I don't want to do this. I made a huge mistake." Don't do that.

Said, if you want to try it out part-time in between classes, in between jobs, on weekends, that is a great idea just to make sure you like it. Then if you like it, you can make a choice if you want to to jump in headfirst and do a hundred percent real estate. The third is the type of person I have seen do extremely well selling real estate part-time, and usually this is the type of person who has amazing connections and a great social circle who buys and sells real estate frequently.

So maybe they just have really good connections, and they don't need to spend a lot of time prospecting or marketing themselves because all they need is maybe one or two friends every then who buy or sell real estate, and that's it. It's pretty simple. Or maybe they have family that goes and buys and sells real estate frequently, and they're the agent that their family uses. So that's another example of what I've seen people do part-time really, really well.

These are the same people who can do real estate part-time because they built up the network and the infrastructure to support a part-time business because the hardest part when you first start doing real estate is just finding clients. When you start, you know pretty much nobody, and it's up to you to go and generate your own business. So if you already have the business of the people who are looking to buy and sell who will use you, that's pretty much half the work right there, and you can do it really well part-time.

Now on the flip side, you may be doing your clients a disservice by not doing it full-time because you might not be able to offer what a full-time agent can. So just to recap, here the difficulties you're going to experience doing it part-time is that you are competing with people who do it full-time, and that's really difficult to compete with other people who do nothing but real estate. It's also really difficult to keep track of all the inventory on the market when, everyday, so many things are changing.

And at the very least, number three, if you're doing it part-time, just make sure you have a really flexible schedule. It is gonna be so much more difficult to sell real estate and be successful at it if you have another part-time job or something else that's taking you away during the day when you should be out there showing homes and seeing what else is on the market. Finally, number four, other agents might not take you as seriously because you're not a full-time agent, and building those relationships with other agents builds your credibility and helps push your offers through when it comes time to write an offer for clients.

But I think it's a great idea to do real estate part-time if you work nights or if you're not sure it's something you really want to do, and you want to test the waters before you jump in, or if you already have an amazing network of people that buy and sell. I think you're okay if they will use you, and if they trust you, and if you know what you're doing to do it part-time because chances are you're gonna be doing pretty well.

So, as always, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really hope this was helpful. If you haven't already, make sure to click Subscribe and also smash that notification bell so you're aware any time I upload a video, even though YouTube rarely ever sends out notifications. But when they do, you're gonna be notified. Also, feel free to add me on Snapchat and Instagram. I post there pretty much daily, so if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me. Thank you again for watching, and until next time.