BreakThru Realty

The New Realtor's Guide to Choosing a Brokerage

Your first brokerage matters more than any you will join later, because it decides whether you are still in the business in eighteen months.

Optimise for Learning, Not the Split

A high split on no closings is nothing. In year one the valuable things are training you will actually complete, someone who reviews your contracts, and a way to have real conversations with buyers and sellers quickly. Choose on those. You can renegotiate or move once you are producing.

Ask What the First Ninety Days Look Like

A good answer is specific and comes without hesitation: which courses you take and in what order, who you shadow and on what, when you are allowed to write a contract without review, and exactly how you become eligible for company leads. A vague answer, or one that turns into a description of the office culture, means nobody has thought about it and you will be on your own in week two. Ask a new agent there what their first ninety days were actually like.

Understand the Costs of Year One

Wherever you go you will pay association and MLS dues, a lockbox key, the post-licensing course and your own marketing. On top of that come the brokerage's fees. Ask for every one in writing and total them for a year in which you close very little, because that is the year you have to survive.

Be Skeptical of Promised Leads

Leads go to agents who answer within minutes and follow up for months, and new agents almost always earn access rather than being handed it. A brokerage that tells you this plainly is being honest with you. One that promises a full pipeline on your first day is recruiting, not hiring, and the promise usually turns out to mean unworked names from a portal that five other agents also received. Ask where leads come from, how many agents get the same one, and what they cost you.

Team or Solo

A team trades a share of your commission for leads, structure and someone to learn from, and for many new agents that is an excellent bargain in year one. The thing to read before you sign is who owns the clients: some team agreements say every client you touch while on the team stays with it, which decides what you are left with if you move. Our guide to teams and brokerages covers the trade in detail, including what a team member typically keeps.

Mistakes New Agents Make

Choosing the brokerage a friend is at without interviewing others. Signing an agreement without reading the exit terms. Paying for leads before learning to convert them. Forgetting the 45-hour post-licensing deadline. Waiting for business to arrive instead of telling everyone they know that they are licensed.

Interview Three

Talk to at least three brokerages of different kinds, a franchise, an independent and a team, and put the same written list of questions to each. You will learn more from where the answers differ than from any single conversation, and you will notice quickly who answers directly and who talks around it. Take a week over it. This is the decision that shapes your first year more than any other, and no good brokerage will rush you. We are glad to be one of the three.

Schedule a Confidential Conversation

Tell us your licence status, how long you have been licensed, the market you work, whether you want residential, commercial or business brokerage, and what you want from your next brokerage. Our broker reads every application personally and replies within one business day. Your inquiry is confidential and we never contact your current brokerage. Prefer to talk now? Call (786) 914-1017.

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