Gen Z real estate agents really want to sell you a house
AS FAR as jobs go, being a real estate agent looked like a no-brainer for Gen Z.
Itwastheheightofthepandemic-eraassetboom and home prices were heading “to the moon.” Buyers were moving fast, sometimes paying cash for properties sight unseen, and TikTok was flooded with tips about how to flip and sell properties. Gen Z’s digital know-how set them apart.
But just as the newest crop of real estate agents was settling into the business, the broader market — as well as the industry at large — got walloped by surging mortgage rates that froze the market and fueled layoffs at brokerages in 2023. Now, the industry’s new generation is in a frosty corner of a chilled labor market, exposed to unsettling early career turbulence.
Gila Goodman got in when times were good. She’d previously tried acting and was serving coffee on Hollywood sets, making “at most” $2,500 a month. But in 2021, when house prices were soaring, the 25-year-old met an agent. This time, he worked in real estate.
“He had a [Mercedes] G-wagon and was really put together,” Ms. Goodman remembers. “I was like, ‘All you do is show beautiful homes and talk to people.’ That got my mind turning.”
She pivoted. Ms. Goodman got her real-estate license, retooled her social-media accounts to focus on property content and left LA for Las Vegas, where home prices were on fire. Even with mortgage rates now near 20-year highs, Vegas remains “somewhat competitive,” according to the real estate company Redfin. Ms. Goodman said she sold 10 properties this October and earned almost $100,000 in commissions.
It’s an enviable story that has been hard to replicate for other young agents. Home sales slid last year as buyers balked at the higher borrowing costs and many potential sellers decided not to list their houses, fueling a shortage of available properties that has been building for years.
In recent weeks, there have been signs of a thaw. For one, there’s plenty of pent-up demand from firsttime buyers stuck on the sidelines and current owners who want to move. And mortgage rates slid in the final weeks of 2023, dipping under 7% as the Federal Reserve eyes rate cuts in 2024. —