5 Ways New Real Estate Agents Can Boost Their Salaries. There is a direct correlation between a real estate agent’s salary and his or her experience. According to a 2014 survey by the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), new real estate agents made $40K less than agents with more than 15 years of experience, averaging around $30K per year. A real estate license creates money making opportunities for you. Of course, many people get into real estate to broker deals between buyers and sellers and gain a commission. But there are other powerful ways to make money with a real estate license. Here are 6 ways you can make money with a license that we will talk about in this article. Javier Carmenate reached out to ask the guys, “I’m thinking about joining a real estate team and wanted to know if you can make good money on a team. Like over $100,000 a year.
- How Fast Can You Make Money With Real Estate
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- How Fast Can You Make Money With Real Estate Investing
- How To Make It In Real Estate
Are you a new real estate agent? Perhaps you have a few years of experience in your pocket but need to make money faster ?
Most people quit 9-5 W2 Jobs to become a real estate agent. While they might have some savings to get them through a few months, it’s common to get anxious because they know they have to get things off the ground fast and start generating income.
Does this scenario sound familiar?
While you can never expect things to happen super-quick in this industry, there are some shortcuts and tricks you can use to fast-track things and start making consistent commission income as a real estate agent.
1. Make Fast Commissions being a Rental Agent
Your income as a real estate agent is mainly based on the number of homes you sell. It might sound rather weird, but can actually make make money as a Realtor without actually selling homes. This is important because making a single sale in real estate could take you months.
But how?
Be innovative. Instead of selling homes, how about you help landlords find renters? Become a rental agent.
You can actually visit two different agencies:
- High-end rentals
- Low-end rentals
Basically, help landlords find great tenants and make up to the first months rent in commission.
Of course, the broker you are under will take a percentage off that commission, but you can still turn things around and start making money within a couple of weeks.
As a rental agent, the important thing to realize is that you ought to be working with the landlord and not the renter. When starting out, you might think that working with many renters and taking them to many houses will be your best option. However, this will burn you out pretty fast.
This is not a great idea as there’s only so much time in a day. It’s counterproductive if you only spend time driving the renters around, showing them house after house.
However, this could work in some higher end luxury markets. There are some real estate markets where this strategy could yield desired results. If you’re in a market where the average rental price is $5,000-$20,000 a month, this strategy is probably worth pursuing.
If the market is smaller and the rent is only $1k-$2k a month, then you’re better off focusing on the landlord themselves and your client.
When you work with the landlord, your tasks will be advertising and marketing the property, then showing the property to potential tenants. You’ll help the landlord go through the data and help them pick the most suitable persons.
This can be really great as you can get commissions within a couple of weeks. If you can get a few tenants under contract and into their new property within a couple of weeks, your business will be off to a good start.
You can make a couple of thousand dollars a month as a rental agent. Some agents make $5,000-$7,000 a month doing this alone.
To succeed as a rental agent, you’ll need excellent communication skills and remarkable customer service.

The potential will be different for every agent because of the market they are in and the rental prices in the area but know that you can make good money fast doing this.
2. Absentee Owner Leads
This is a great lead source that’s frequently overlooked. It’s mostly suitable if you don’t want to do rentals at first and you want to go straight into sales.
Absentee owners are investors or landlords who own specific properties but don’t live in them as their primary residence. They are also not involved in the management of the said properties. Such properties are also referred to as non-owner occupied properties.

People become absentee owners for many reasons. They include
- The landlord may have bought the property for rental reasons but has not been able to find tenants.
- The property could be a vacation home.
- The landlord could have inherited the property and don’t want to live in it.
- Loved ones could have initially purchased the property.
- The investor could have relocated but not sold the property yet.
- The owner bought the property only for capital appreciation.
- The owner is in the army and has been deployed to a different location.
This lead source is potent in 2021 because there’s low inventory compared to other years.
A lot of agents are calling sellers and getting people that are interested in selling. However, the sellers ultimately turn them down, saying they don’t want to get into bidding wars when trying to find their next house as there’s no inventory. As a result they do not move and do not sell.
If you’re a new agent and you have only a few months left in your savings, this strategy of long term follow up won’t help you.
Absentee owner leads can play a vital role in helping your business get off the ground in 2021.
Absentee owners often don’t have to buy anything else. They might be on their third home, or maybe it’s an investment property that’s just sitting there, and it’s an excellent opportunity for them to discover the value of their home and cash out while the market’s high.
With this strategy, you have to get to the action. Get on the phone, call the leads and make outbound prospecting attempts.
This lead source is overlooked, yet it’s a great way to get your foot in the door and start earning commissions much quicker.
FSBO and Expired Leads
For sale by owner (FSBO) is a listing property method where the owner is selling the property themselves, without the help of an agent or broker. Most property owners who do this do so to avoid paying commissions.
FSBO clients are a little bit challenging in this market because many are having success selling on their own. But remember, owners might not have the resources and networks that agents have. Could they get more money if they listed with you? Probably.
After prospecting this lead source you will quickly learn that they think that they’re winning in their minds, so it can be difficult to convince them to list with you.
That’s not to mean that you should ignore this lead source completely because even if you spend an hour a day on it, you’re going to get a result. It’s a low hanging fruit and the fortune is in the follow up. Make friends with these home owners.
Keep in mind that some fruits are already getting picked before you get to them because of the market we’re in. Some buyers are already going straight to the seller and offering to buy their houses.
This is also not happening in every scenario, so giving up on this lead source completely is a big mistake.
Expired listing leads
As for expired leads, some agents might think that they’re not happening in this market. While this could be true to some extent, you need to know about old expired leads.
You can dig back in your MLS and find expired leads from four or five years ago and start pulling their numbers. Get the data and call them up. Tell them that you can try to find a buyer for the house they tried to sell back then since we’re in a different market.
This strategy could spark an interest in somebody that might be on the fence about selling. If you can be the first agent to call them and help them through that process, you’ll start getting listings every single month.
Conclusion
2021 has been a tough year for many industries. The real estate sector is also reeling from the after effects of the pandemic. There’s not much inventory compared to other years.
As a new real estate agent or an experienced one looking for ways to pay your bills, there are several ways you can remain afloat. Become innovative and make faster commissions. Work with property owners to find tenants for their units.
Approach absentee owners and make outbound prospecting attempts. Also, think of FSBO and expired leads.
Which strategies are you using to get leads in 2021?
And that’s it! A burger from the grill to the counter in less than 30 seconds!
You and I may not find anything special in this statement, but this was like music to the ears of a Ray Kroc, a traveling salesman who made a living by selling milkshake machines to fast food restaurants. His eyes lit up when he walked into the first-ever McDonald’s outlet in Pasadena, California.
Back in the 1940s, the drive-in restaurant culture was picking up like anything. People used to drive into their favorite joints, grab a burger and milkshake while sitting in the comfort of their car and drive merrily away.
There was only one catch – the really long wait times! And Raymond Albert Kroc (famously Ray Kroc) hated them. He truly felt, that this is the worst thing to happen to the customer experience, which was making the customer wait.
The concept of ‘fast food’ was practically non-existent. Mcdonald’s brought it!
Ray had spent his entire life visiting restaurants across America, selling giant milkshake machines. He used to tell his customers, that people don’t want to wait for 20 minutes to get a milkshake and demonstrate his machine which made 8 or milkshakes in one go. He went from one sales call to the other, getting rejected. People simply didn’t see the need to buy such a machine. They never thought the food was a time game.
Ray was waiting for this big idea in the Food Business and then he got a call from a guy asking him to send 4 of his milkshake machines over. Ray was confused. He wondered who is this guy who needs to make 32 milkshakes at one go, how is he even doing these kinds of sales. He took his car and set out to drive hundreds of kilometers to see this restaurant called McDonald’s for real.
When he reached there, he saw a sight that he would never forget for the rest of his life. He saw a long line of people outside a burger joint called McDonald’s which had an average wait time of less than 5 minutes. He stood in the line, got a burger and tried it. It was awesome!
When he met, the McDonald brothers, Dick and Mac (the real Mcdonalds), they walked him through their super-fast burger supply chain which was nothing but a modified kitchen that churned out delicious hamburgers in less than 30 seconds per burger. Each burger had the same taste, same flavor because the process was so efficient and standardized. This was revolutionary for Ray.
From there on, began a wonderful journey of McDonald’s that resulted in a real estate empire worth $53 billion and counting.
Confused about how a burger joint called McDonald’s became a real estate empire?
The story goes like this. Ray convinced the McDonald brothers to sell their revolutionary McDonald’s outlet concept and expand it as a franchise model. He would do the selling and get new partners, and they will lend him their brand name and get a 0.5 % cut of all sales. The brothers signed it off after a strict clause that stated that they wouldn’t compromise on quality and everything would go through them.
Over the next 5 years, Ray created 228 McDonald’s across America. He wanted to make McDonald’s the quintessential American family place of eating. All was going well, McDonald’s was doing well and Ray’s popularity was growing.
Read: Viral Marketing over the Long-Haul ft. Burger King
Only one thing was not working for Mcdonald’s. He was not making much money.
After all, how much can you make on a burger that costs a few dollars? Ray was in deep debt and put his home up for mortgage as the number of McDonald’s kept growing by the day. That’s when a smart lawyer told him,
“Mr. Kroc you don’t quite understand the real business you are in. You are not in the business of selling burgers.”
“Then what is it? he asked the lawyer.
The lawyer said, “You are in the business of real estate Mr. Kroc”.
And the rest is history. Ray created a new company called the ‘McDonald’s Real Estate Corporation’ which acquired land and leased it out to franchise partners. This helped him create what is a $53 Billion (2020) real estate business.
So What is McDonald’s Strategy Story of becoming a Real Estate company?
The reason of high profitability is that it owns the land and buildings at most of its locations – and its franchisees pay McDonald’s rent. They started by leasing out to franchisees, charging a 20% markup but increased it to 40%. They were minting a lot of money. The brand also made an arrangement in the lease agreement that if the outlet was doing well, then the markup would go up. The franchisee paid the lease markup or 5% of sales, whichever was higher making McDonald’s invincible.
The chain kept expanding and McDonald’s real estate business kept growing. They expanded domestically and internationally, reaching 10,000 outlets by 1988. By 21st century, they had 35,000 outlets in more than 100 countries, with one McDonald’s opening every 5 hours.
The major strategy lessons for new entrepreneurs:
- Try to find a growth model with minimum liabilities. In this case McDonald’s did not have the liability to pay rent yet it became one of the largest fast-food chain
- As an entrepreneur, it’s important you create an alternate source of income if your original business goes down
- Focus on building real assets that can provide strength if things do not work in your favor.
As of 2020, the estimated brand value of McDonald’s is more than $129 billion. Each franchise costs an average of $1.5 million in startup funds to launch with net revenues around $150,000 to $175,000 annually, according to Franchise.com. Want to own one?
In conclusion, even if people stop eating burgers tomorrow, McDonald’s is not going down, supported by its massive real estate empire. That’s how a sustainable business model is built. If this is not a story to learn lessons from, then what is! Tell us what you think in the comments. The guy in the below video explains the concept in detail.
Interested in reading our Advanced Strategy Stories. Check out our collection.
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