It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. As a real estate agent I spend a fair amount of time looking at real estate. Generally when we go in a home that is for sale we are supposed to take our shoes off. This time of year I like to wear thick socks so my feet don’t get cold and I like socks that make a statement. I have socks with polka dots on them and socks decorated with snowflakes and colorful paisley socks too.
These are my favorites.
There is a rule about socks: TGIF “toes go in first”.
January is the time of year when I get calls and emails from people who want to become real estate agents. I don’t know exactly how many real estate agents there are in the metro area but I do know that there are over in 17,000 Minnesota. A Realtor is a member of the National association of Realtors.
Back during the peak in 2006-2007 there were more than 25,000 Realtors in Minnesota. In about 2011 the agent population in the state went down and was around 15,800. When the housing market crashed it took a lot of agents with it.
Generally when the economy is good and the unemployment rate is low fewer people decide to start businesses or get real estate licenses. Yet when the unemployment rate is low there seem to be more home sales than when it is higher. Go figure.
Not all members of the NAR or who have real estate licenses sell real estate and not all of those who sell real estate do it as a full time job. In general it is safe to say that there are plenty of real estate agents and certainly no shortage of experienced full time real estate agents and there are plenty of new agents too.
Getting a real estate license in Minnesota takes about six weeks, including 90 hours of classroom time over the internet or in a classroom and passing a test. I wouldn’t be hard to complete the whole thing in four weeks. It usually costs less than $1000 including the license fee. Real estate is regulated at the state level which is why the licensing requirements and rules are local.
Most of the people who contact me are pretty confident that once they get their license they won’t have any trouble finding business. They picture themselves working with friends and family and selling houses like crazy because it is so easy, right? It doesn’t always work that way and the failure rate for real estate agents is very high, as high as 80% in the first year. I always recommend that before starting an agent has enough money saved up to pay the bills for a year and to pay for advertising, lock boxes, MLS fees and the list goes on and on.
Usually those who quit early on do so because they can not pay their business and personal bills while they are looking for clients to work with. People who dislike looking for work should not consider becoming a real estate agent. We look for work every day and finding business is how we spend much of out time.
Business bills and personal bills come due each month and we only get paid if we sell something and only after the sale closes successfully. Most of us are independent contractors working on 100% commission. real estate companies do not sell real estate. They recruit agents and train them and provide office space. The agent at the open house isn’t getting paid and owns all of those open house signs with the company logo on them.
For me a career in real estate has been a great fit and I really enjoy what I do. There is no glass ceiling and there are no office politics. . . at least not for me because my main office is in my home. I have a lot of flexibility in my schedule and once I get my work done I don’t have to hang around an office until it is quitting time. There isn’t anyone micromanaging my work and each day is different from the last as I list homes and then sell them or work with each home buyer.
See the Minnesota Department of Commerce website for information about how to get a Minnesota real estate license.
Here is a list of the top ten metro areas with the lowest unemployment rates:
| 1 | Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI Metropolitan Statistical Area | 3.0 |
| 2 | Columbus, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area | 3.7 |
| 3 | Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area | 3.9 |
| 3 | Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area | 3.9 |
| 3 | Oklahoma City, OK Metropolitan Statistical Area | 3.9 |
| 6 | Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN Metropolitan Statistical Area | 4.3 |
| 6 | Pittsburgh, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area | 4.3 |
| 6 | San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area | 4.3 |
| 9 | Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area | 4.5 |
| 9 | Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area | 4.5 |
Source Bureau of Labor statistics data is for November 2014 and seasonally adjusted.
The largest employers in the metro area are government agencies . . like the state of Minnesota. I was just looking at some data about state of Minnesota employees on the transparency MN web site and discovered that some of the people who work for the state were hired in the 1950’s.
From Alden Square to Xinia Triangle there are at least 144 parks in St. Paul. Some of the parks are on acres and acres of land and others are little patches of land along busy streets. Some parks have a sculpture or a bench while others have Picnic tables, grills, water features and swimming. One city park even has a zoo. We hold events in the parks and concerts and weddings. We love our parks.
No matter where you live in St. Paul there is a park nearby. Oh and dog parks too.
Photography is more important than ever for marketing homes for sale. Most home buyers will not find the home they plan on buying at an open house that they just happened to go to. They will instead spend hours on the internet looking at information about houses and pictures of them.
Home with huge mostly white rooms are fairly easy to photograph. Smaller darker rooms are more common in the homes I sell. Using bright lights pretty much destroys the ambiance and character of the property. Using a little extra lighting and a slower shutter speed lightens the room but keeps it looking natural. Using a wide angle lens that captures a fairly large section of the room is also critical and in a room like this getting the white balance right so the room doesn’t look orange can be tricky.
As for those virtual tours that are slide shows they are kind of a waste of time especially if the photos in them are mediocre. A lot of bright lights makes rooms looked washed out and unnatural. A little video is nice to go with the still photographs but it is the photographs that will grab and hold the prospective buyers attention.
Before the internet we used newspaper ads and open houses to sell homes. Today we use photography to sell homes. The loft pictured in this post got a lot of views and sold quickly as compared to other similar units.
There are only 642 homes on the market in St. Paul right now that do not have offers on them. The inventory of homes on the market took a dive on New Years day when a bunch of listings expired. They expired because the contracts the sellers had with their agents were set to end at the end of the year. There are at least 80 homes in addition to the 642 that are for sale but are not being actively marketed they are “temporarily not available to show” often because the owners do not want to be disturbed during the holidays.
There is a demand for homes for sale right now. One of my listings sold on New Years day and yesterday I was out showing homes and having a hard time finding enough of them to show.
The conventional wisdom for homeowners is to wait until spring to sell but January might be as good or better for a faster home sale. Generally homes that are on the market for a shorter period of time get closer to the asking price.
Here is a chart of the activity in St. Paul on New Years day which is a holiday but most days we only see 3 to 9 listings expire not 51.
Homes that are on the market sell faster than those that are not on the market. Most if not all of the expired listings are very salable and I hope they go back on the market soon and i would be happy to list them myself.