Working in real estate as a new agent can be daunting, especially if you are nervous about the deal flow and upcoming closings. In order to offset the income uncertainty a new agent faces, you can add a complementary part-time job to your schedule while you build your business.
Using your knowledge and skills as a real estate agent, some part-time jobs allow you to make more than you would in another part-time position elsewhere.
1. Licensed Assistant
Once you get to a certain point in your real estate career, juggling everything you have going on can become difficult. At this point, hiring a licensed assistant is a logical step in being able to continue providing top-notch service.
As a new agent, working as a licensed assistant is a great way to learn from an experienced agent. It can also pay lucratively.
As a licensed assistant, you are providing services that can’t be done without a license. Bringing a license to the table makes you more competitive for the job if there are other applicants.
Why It’s Useful to Have Your License as a Real Estate Assistant
As a licensed assistant, you can do things that unlicensed assistants cannot. This demands a premium in terms of your hourly rate. Here’s a list of things a licensed assistant can do that require them to have their license:
- Run comps (comparative sales analyses on similar properties to find a likely sales price of a property)
- Show properties to clients
- Draft up offers and send out contracts for clients to sign
- Deliver monies to title companies
- Negotiating terms on a client’s offer
- Cold calling/prospecting
- Qualifying leads for team agents
- Host open houses on weekends
- Negotiating listing agreements
- Property management for agent clients
- Negotiating leases
As you can see, there are quite a few things you could be doing as a licensed assistant. Most of these will directly teach you things that will also help you build your own real estate business. Take any opportunity you can to ask questions and learn as much as possible from the duties you carry out.
For example, learning how to cold call by doing it for a more experienced agent is great for improving quickly. Although terrifying at first, having them sit there with you and listen to your calls can be invaluable. Getting their real-time feedback on how you handle conversations is the quickest way to improve your odds of success in converting prospects to leads.
2. Part-Time Transaction Coordinator
As a real estate agent, you should understand how a deal should flow to close smoothly and on time. The most organized agents usually excel at coordinating their own transactions and helping others without thinking twice.
If you are highly organized, a part-time job as a transaction coordinator might be a good fit for you. It is not uncommon for transaction coordinators to charge $200 to $400 per transaction that they manage for agents.
What Is A Transaction Coordinator’s Job?
At the core, a transaction coordinator is responsible for the logistical flow of important documents and information. They ensure all necessary documents for the transaction are completed correctly and delivered where needed.
Communicating with title companies, lenders, agents, and vendors to ensure that a smooth closing occurs on schedule is the most important thing transaction coordinators do daily. It is easy for an agent to miss one needed initial on a contract, or forget to send a document to where it should go.
Having a good transaction coordinator on board prevents these missteps and saves agents time and money.
Why It’s Useful to Have Your License as a Transaction Coordinator
As a transaction coordinator, you need to be licensed to be sending out documents for signature. Having experience and knowing how a good deal flows can make the difference between a mediocre and a great transaction coordinator.
3. Showing Assistant for other Real Estate Agents
Are you working as an agent but looking for a little extra income when you can get it? One way to do this is by showing houses for other agents. There are services like Showami that connect agents to each to help with showing clients properties. You can also get the word out yourself to agents in your office.
Although this is unlikely to replace your income as a full-time agent, this is a good way to make $20-100 per day between phone calls and showings of your own.
Why You Need Your License to be a Showing Assistant
In order to show homes for payment, you must be licensed in your state. Not only for safety and legal reasons but being a real estate agent also gives you access to the local MLS lockboxes.
4. Real Estate Photography and Inspections
Do you have a knack for photography or an artistic eye? Perhaps you have a technical background and an eye for details.
Perhaps a side hustle doing real estate photography or home inspections would work out well for you! The upfront costs of real estate photography can be high if you are not already into photography, but it can be an easy option if you are already into the hobby.
Building a part-time business as a real estate photographer, you can make a few hundred dollars off of photographing listings for your brokerage. Becoming a preferred vendor for your brokerage and others in your market is a good way to have a stable side income.
For inspectors, this is another career requiring a license. However, being a real estate agent, you will have connections with lots of real estate agents and homeowners. Passing your number to your colleagues in your market is an easy way to build a business quickly.
Why Having Your License is an Advantage as a Photographer or Inspector
Having your license as a photographer can make photographing properties more convenient because you will have access to the lockboxes in your market.
As an inspector and real estate agent, you will have connections with local agents as well as easy access to properties. The ease of access for both is a huge factor, as that takes the pressure off of other agents and clients to open doors during working hours.
5. Freelance Content Creation
Working as a freelance content creator with your real estate license can be very profitable. During lockdowns I had newborn daughters at home and couldn’t risk exposing them to any potential viral load. Therefore, I found freelance writing as a result of seeking ways to use my expertise to earn an income.
As a result, I built a reputation online among real estate firms for writing high-quality content. At first, I was charging $35 per 1200 words in order to build up a client base and reputational capital.
Over the course of a few months, I began increasing prices until I reached the point where new clients were seeking me out and paying $200 per single-spaced page of copywriting. I was having to meet deadlines imposed by others, but it was possible to make $400 – $600 per day from home while raising newborns and working in short sprints throughout the day and night between changing diapers and putting twins back to bed.
Although a great way to generate income in the short run, it can be mentally taxing and is a direct trade of your time for your money. The consistency is less predictable than selling real estate, but by building a steady pipeline of regular clients this can easily become your primary source of income or full-time job.
Why Being a Real Estate Agent Opens Up Higher Income Potential When Doing Freelance Content Creation
Having a professional license in any field, including real estate, is opening up doors for you in freelancing. Your expertise and knowledge in the field is worth more than that of someone without the same licensing and experience.
To put it into perspective, you are going to take more seriously the medical opinion of your friend that is a practicing physician than your friend who is trying to sell you into a health and wellness pyramid scheme.
6. Coaching
Do you have high-level experience growing successful businesses? Perhaps you should consider coaching to utilize your past experiences and current real estate licensing.
Coaching real estate agents can be a scalable way to build passive income. My caveat to those curious about coaching others is the need to be legitimate. Too many “coaches” in all fields have little life experience in business, real estate, and the real world.
If you have only been out of school for a couple of years and fancy yourself a coach, I recommend going out and building a business empire that makes your experience undeniable first.
7. Property Management
Working in property management can be a good part-time job for agents needing a salary while they build their income streams as an agent. While managing properties for a property management company, you will be learning a lot about real estate.
Although the pay may not be enough to subsist on, the contacts you are making will carry over for years. While working in property management, you are meeting renters almost every single day.
A lot of renters will eventually become homebuyers. Many are eligible to buy homes already and just don’t know how to navigate the process. This is a fantastic opportunity to bring your worlds together and help these renters begin building equity in a home when they are ready to quit renting. Make friends with tenants, and build those relationships so they come to you when they’re ready to buy a home.
Why You Need to Be Licensed to Manage Properties
In most states, leasing and renting are real estate activities. This means regulating bodies such as TREC (Texas Real Estate Commission) are overseeing all activities being carried out by licensees.
One exception to this is if an individual is a salaried employee of an apartment complex. A leasing associate that works the front desk and shows units does not need a license. However, someone who is showing houses for rent on behalf of landlords would need to hold an active license.
For this reason, property management companies hold a broker’s license under which their agents work. This allows their licensed agents to lease and show properties for their clients, and conduct real estate activities legally. This is great as a part-time job because many of the clients you help find rental houses will eventually be ready to buy in a year or two. Stay in touch, and you will have a pool of future buyers ready to use your services representing them.
8. Information Products
First off, what are information products? Info products are products sold where the primary value is the knowledge within.
Being a licensed real estate agent, you have valuable knowledge that you can share with the world and others are willing to pay for. For newer agents, this may not be the first side job that you take on. For more experienced agents stepping away from actively selling or wanting to create a passive income stream, creating info products can be a great option.
This includes writing books, creating websites to share your knowledge, and any other avenue through which you can provide knowledge transfer.
9. Property Staging
Do you have a background in interior design or have a knack for designing appealing spaces? Set yourself up for success and start a staging company!
For new agents who are unfamiliar, staging is the act of arranging furniture and decorations to make the home more appealing to the eye of consumers.
Typically, stagers are called in when Realtors are selling a vacant or cluttered home that needs decorating. They are experts in making spaces feel larger and more inviting. Often, stagers will own storage units full of furniture that they will rent to homeowners or real estate agents to use in their listings until they sell.
Owning your own staging company as an agent, you are going to save lots of money that you’d otherwise be paying to a third party company to stage your listing. Typically depending on the market, staging will either be a lump sum fee of $1-4 per square foot of the home, or a monthly fee of a fraction of that price based on how long it is expected to take the home to sell.
