Kris Krohn here and today, we're talking about how to get a real estate license
and I've brought a realtor, a friend of mine,
Steven Miller, you've seen him before to talk about his license, how he got it,
pros and cons, should you get one, shouldn't you get one and everything
else you need to know.
We are back. I'm here with Steven Michael Miller and today we are talking
about how to get a real estate license. Many of you have been commenting and
asking and there's this idea that, hey if I get into real estate or if I'm going
to be an investor, do I need to have a license? Steven, let's just actually
start with some of the basics on, we'll get to how you get one but first of all,
what is a real estate license? - Yeah, a real estate license licenses you to be
able to buy and sell real estate for other people, to represent to somebody, in
other words, you're becoming an agent for that individual in that transaction but
the reality is, in order to invest in real estate, you don't have to be
licensed in anything. Some people think about getting their
mortgage license, some people think about doing their real estate license, maybe
some people want to get into the title aspects of that so they can do all the
title searches on their homes but to be a successful real estate investor, you
don't necessarily need any of those yourself. Now that being said, there are
some benefits, there can be some benefits to get licensed. I'm a licensed real
estate agent. At one point, Kris and I were both licensed mortgage or loan
officers so there could be some benefits because you can take advantage of some
of that commission that's more money in your pocket, that's more profitability
for you at rather than paying that to somebody else but you don't have to
necessarily. - Yeah, so look at this for a moment, when I'm out there in the real
estate world and I'm investing in online properties, I'm going to come across
properties that I want, I'm going to come across properties that I don't want. Real
estate is really a game of people more than property which means that when
you're dealing with people, you're going to run into people that also might want
help buying a property and if all of a sudden you're putting in a little extra
legwork and it can earn you several thousand dollar commission when that
house sells or if you want to represent someone in selling a house, we've always
said that, hey if you're going to be in the game a real estate, maximize across the
board wherever you can so for many of you, there's a couple of things that that
can mean. If you're transacting or plan on transacting a lot of real estate,
there likely could be a benefit from you of holding a license. Now Steven said it
really well, you cannot be paid on multiple licenses on a single
transaction so for example if I held every license, I couldn't be the
appraiser, the loan officer, the realtor and the title officer, that would be
illegal. I couldn't even play two of those roles
simultaneously. I could own multiple licenses but I can only use one per
transaction and I want to bring up a point about being a licensed realtor
or any other license. When Steven and I said we started
the loan officer game in the beginning, I got my lending license because I didn't
understand loans and I wanted to. The education was so valuable for my journey
but I would argue that it is many times more work for a lot less pay to be a
licensed loan officer than a licensed realtor and so if you do have to pick a
license, the reality is that, getting the realtor's license is something that
you can double dip on a lot more handsomely and a lot more easily than a
lot of the other licenses that are out there and available to you. - Yeah, so one
question that we've gotten is, will a real estate license make me wealthy and
the answer is, it could, it depends on what your focus is, if your focus is on
investing alone then the investing should be enough to make you wealthy but
if you want to get your license and have that be a a part-time gig or maybe even
a side full-time gig to start funding more of your real estate, you could do
that too and you can actually get a lot of wealth, I mean there are some super
super wealthy real estate agents and brokers in the world and that's
one way that you can do that. - Now it is important to understand though that
there's a difference between real estate as a job in real estate as an investment
so when you're licensed realtor, what you're doing is if you're one of
those big brokers out there that's making hundreds of thousands of dollars
a year, that's awesome but make sure that you do understand that you're not
investing and you're not an investor, in fact, when you don't work, you don't get
paid and so it's important to know that it's a job which means you're trading
dollar for hours. Doing realtor the right way, it can be a really lucrative
exchange, meaning it's not like you're trading ten dollars per hour, you can
literally exchange hundreds or in some cases, thousands of dollars per hour
which creates a really nice draw. On the other hand, it's important to, I want to
give you a word of caution, a lot of people think that having a real estate
license means that you're in real estate, that is true but also make sure you
don't confuse that with becoming an investor. Unfortunately, there are many
real estate agents out there that are so good at being realtors or so busy making
their money that way that they actually, they're so close to investing but they
don't actually ever get into it because it's easy to make an excuse that
I'm already in real estate. An investor is someone who has properties that are
paying them cash flow, paying them and that have equity that are growing for
them and there's a plan. Can you do both? The answer is absolutely. You absolutely can.
Now Steven, if someone wants to get a real estate license, what does that look
like in most scenarios? - Yeah, getting a real estate license is really simple. As
a matter of fact, you'll just want to probably jump online, there are several
different online schools that you can go to. If you jump online, you can find
some good local schools that you can go to and one of the requirements before
you can even get licensed is to go through a certain number of hours of
school of, it has to be a certified school with with the state, your
state will have to approve that so once you go through the schooling and you get
that certificate, you can then go in and take the test and.. - How many hours did it
take for you to get license? - It's 120 hours of school. - So it's 120 hours so if
you think about it for a minute, it's a pretty big commitment front and did it
cost money too? - It does cost money, several hundred dollars. It's
not crazy but once you pay that seven hundred dollars, you get the
education, you'll have to pay another fee to get your license. I don't have all the
numbers right off the top of my head, it's probably different in different
areas as well but I think for under a thousand dollars,
you can get your schooling, get licensed and depending on whether or not
you're going to become part of the MLS which is an extra fee a month - Multi lifting services -
yeah, thank you or you know, other things like that, there are some
sometimes different County resources that you may want to tap into and there
are little fees here and there for all of that so but the reality is,
if you want to become a licensed real estate agent, it's not that difficult.
Enroll in the school, take the course and then go take the test. - Now I would share
just two other things that I think will be very useful for you in this video.
First of all, there is one disadvantage to owning a license that we're really
aware of that doesn't have to be a big disadvantage but once you are licensed,
that must be disclosed in any transaction that you're ever a part of
what you're ever doing and there are times when as an investor, you might be
working with somebody for example, it could be a seller finance deal, you need
to disclose that you are also a realtor and that can be scary to some people, it
can also play with people in their head with fees, oh now I'm going to have to pay
you a certain amount when as an investor, you're, you know, so can you get around
that? Yes, you absolutely can, there's a posture to work around that but you need
to understand that there's a limitation in the fact that you do need to disclose
that when you're doing deals and I don't really see it being a true hinderment
of really getting in your way but it is something that you need to be aware of.
The last thing, Steven, is once someone has a license, the only way they can
really be useful with that license is they need to hang their license with a broker.
There's a lot of brokers out there, there's some that do splits like a
70/30 split and there's some that say, hey you know we'll charge you this fee
and then you make all the rest of the money, there's a lot of different
approaches to brokerages. Do you have any advice on that?
- Absolutely. I would say work with a broker who's going to benefit you the
most. Some of you may say, hey I know a lot about real estate, I'm just getting
my license because I want to earn that extra money. You may want to go
with a very hands-off type of broker who maybe that person who doesn't provide a
lot of training but gives you a large large split, great. On the other hand,
you're kind of new to this and you want to learn the ropes and learn how to
market to grow your real estate business, your realtor business then you
may want to choose a broker who may take a little bit more in the beginning but
it's going to offer you a lot of training, a lot of hand-holding so it just really
depends on your specific needs. This is the final idea that I want to share
with you. Unfortunately, there's a perception out there where some people
truly do confuse being an investor with being a realtor. At the end of the day, I
want to make sure that it's really clear. This video of how to get your real
estate license is all about how you get a real estate license. Understand it is
not a requirement to become an investor, in fact, you can click the link up here
and you can actually jump headfirst into the world of investing
and you don't need any license, you'll want our training because we'll actually
show you the biggest shortcut and condense years of experience in hundreds
of millions on real estate and really compacted into a minimalistic training
that will just get you doing real estate and that's one approach, being a licensed
realtor is a different approach and you absolutely can combine them together.
I hope you enjoyed today's video. Please be sure to subscribe,
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