What are the different career options in Real estate and what kind of license you require for that? It’s important to know what is best for you and how long it takes and specially what kind of licenses you need to work in specific sector of real estate.
First, we are going to start with most common one we all know,
Realtor\Real Estate Agent
You have to take a course and write an exam to get Realtor license and then you will be part of your local real estate board and follow their guidelines. Also, you will need to register yourself with brokerage firms like Remax and will have to pay percentage of commission you make from every sale. They take good chunk of your money.
I heard people normally spend somewhere between 3-5K to get training and passing the exam.
Mortgage Broker
You have to take approved mortgage agent education programs and once completed then Apply for a mortgage agent licence within two years of completion. Online course is just around $400 and takes only few weeks to complete and then license fee is around $1,000.
You can check out HERE for more about online courses.
Construction worker like Electrician\Plumber
You will have to do 1-2 years of course and then Apprenticeship for quite a while to become certified Electrician\Plumbers.
They make pretty good money here in Montreal, in the range of $60-80/hour
Property Inspector
This is very interesting work, Property inspector will visit the house\property for 2-3 hrs to do the inspection and then he produces a detailed report with pictures about the property. It mainly lists all the defects or improvements you require.
This is not as controlled as the Plumber\Electrician sector and it’s easy to get a certificate, but you will have to prove your work quality. In this job, you will have to learn everything about the house like Electricity, Plumbing, Roofing, Foundation code etc. And it’s not easy to remember all those construction codes.
Builder\Contractor
You can become builder or contractor by doing certification and writing exams. It’s best to enrol with some institute to get training for those exams and once passed, you can act as builder\contractor. You will be allowed to hire sub-contractors to do specific tasks for your project.
Flipper
You can be flipper in two ways, just buy low and sell high without making lot of changes to the property.
But you can also buy very shitty property and complete overall it by doing major changes, but to do this you should have builder license.
I wanted to try flipping and I do have builder\contractor license which I got after writing 5 exams, it cost me close to $5K.
Rental Property investor\owner
You can be rental property owner like me, No need of any course or certification. I learnt everything while doing it.
Interestingly, you can do most of the maintenance yourself without getting any license. You can be Manager, plumber, electrician for your own properties, no questions asked.
Home Stager
There is another work you can do without getting license and it’s decent money as well, it’s home staging. People come to your home and stage it to look nice to make a sale.
I have hired Home stager one time to sell my house which I remodelled for flipping. It cost me $1,000 to stage it and then $500 for every month to keep it staged.
