Real estate agent jobs took off during pandemic
In March 2020 when the pandemic hit, the restaurant where Amy Bieganek was working as a waitress announced a temporary closure. By August, it turned into a permanent one.
Unemployment was a shock for Bieganek, 53, who had been working in the Minneapolis restaurant industry for 30 years. “That was heartbreaking,” she said. “Being in the restaurant industry, I never thought I would be out of a job ever.”
She thought it might be time to explore a new career. After talking to a friend who is a real estate agent, Bieganek signed up for classes. In February 2021 she got her real estate license.
Real estate has drawn an abundance of workers while nearly every other industry has struggled with hiring. In 2021, there were a record number of real estate agents in the United States, according to the National Association of Realtors. More than 156,000 people joined their ranks in 2021 and 2020 combined — nearly 60% more than in the two years prior.
“At a time when there’s a worker shortage everywhere it seems, there’s almost a surplus of people coming to real estate,” said Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the Realtors’ association. “What’s amazing is we keep hitting new high after new high.”
And many more will likely join their ranks this year. According to Google search trends, the top job-related search between January 2021 and January 2022 was “how to become a real estate agent.”
In a commission-based industry, record high prices are a powerful lure. The median home now sells for $408,000 — up 13.7% from a year ago. Agents aren’t typically salaried but get paid a 2% to 3% percent on the price of a home when
they represent buyers or sellers. As much as half of that can go to their brokerage firm and to pay for marketing fees.
“Even in the middle of the pandemic, you talk to almost any Realtor and they’ll tell you 2021 was their best year ever,” said Maggie Gwin, a Los Angeles-based agent with Sotheby’s.
Gwin is also an actress who says her biggest break yet was on the horizon in 2020. Selling homes seemed like a job that could offer her the flexibility to continue auditioning and to support her family.
When the market looked like it was coming to a standstill at the beginning of the pandemic, Redfin, the Seattle-based brokerage with branches nationwide, furloughed about one-third of its more than 3,000 agents, said Glenn Kelman, the CEO of the firm. (Unlike
most brokerages, Redfin pays their agents a salary with benefits, in addition to commission — making them costly to keep on staff during market lulls).
By May 2020, when the market picked up, the company started bringing furloughed employees back and more were recruited. “It was a nonstop hiring frenzy,” said Mary Gallagher, a senior director of recruitment for the company.
In 2022, she said Redfin is taking it “week to week” to monitor the market and see if hiring should continue at the same pace.
Historically, the number of agents tends to grow in boom markets. In 2005 and 2006 — the frenzied years leading up to the market collapse in 2007 — more than 250,000 people became agents. In 2008, after the market crashed, the ranks of real estate
agents declined by more than 10%, according to data from the Realtors’ association.
But, unlike during previous booms, the number of homes for sale today is at a record low. In December, there were 910,000 homes on the market, down 14% from a year prior. That same month, the association said its membership hit a record high of more than 1.5 million.
With far more real estate agents than homes for sale, competition can be fierce.
Carolyn Lee, a new Redfin agent based outside Seattle, said she trudged through a snowstorm with clients in January to see a home that just hit the market. They made an offer on the home and got it — beating out six other offers. “You have to be willing to do what it takes, especially right now,” she said.
Though she’s putting in
long hours getting her real estate career going, in many ways it’s less stressful than her previous job, she said.
Two years ago, she was logging 60-hour weeks as the manager of a health care clinic where she oversaw COVID-19 testing during shortages of personal protective equipment and high death rates from the virus.
By last summer, after vaccines rolled out and the worst of the crisis seemed past, “a lot of people started to have these conversations like, ‘What do you want do with your life?’ ” she said. One day, a Redfin alert popped up on a job website offering agent training in the company’s career accelerator program, which targets potential new agents from outside the industry. Lee, 40, jumped at the opportunity to try something new.
Bieganek and Gwin say their previous careers have also prepared them for selling homes. Bieganek, who invested about $3,000 in training and multiple listing service fees to get started, described real estate as just another hospitality-based job where a service mentality is key. “I have a good sense of how to adapt to people from being at a restaurant and being a bartender,” she said.
Gwin is starting by working with a mentor from her brokerage to build up a client base. “They say you gotta build a thick skin for rejection,” for which her decades as an actress have well-prepared her. “I eat rejection for breakfast.”
Real estate also is appealing in part because of its relatively low barrier to entry, said Ken Johnson, a professor at Florida Atlantic University who specializes in real estate economics. Training typically takes two or three months and costs just a couple hundred dollars, though brokerage and multiple listing service fees can cost a few thousand dollars more.
But making a real living doing it is harder. Johnson, who shifted to academia after 12 years as an agent himself, estimates that as few as 1 in 10 agents survive long enough to make a fulltime living selling homes. “It’s a really empowering feeling to be your own boss,’ ” he said. “But it’s usually around a year where you look around and realize, ‘I can’t do this.’ ” Income is typically entirely based on commission, and expenses for marketing and brokerage fees can be high.
Many new agents are holding onto their old professions. Bieganek said she’s still waitressing at a restaurant two or three nights a week, but she hopes to transition to real estate full time in a few years. Gwin said she continues to audition for roles. For her, it’s more of a companion to her creative work. (Her email signature says “actress/realtor.”)