Real estate brokers' personal schedules

April 14, 2025 3:46 PM

I imagine that a successful real estate agent in a large city would need to make themselves available for clients and showings on many weekends and evenings. How would the agent carve out time for themselves?
posted by Lemkin to Work & Money (2 answers total)

There are lots of businesses that happen evenings and weekends - martial arts for example. A lot of people just swing their shifts, so start at 1 or 2 in the afternoon.

However with real estate...my mum was in real estate for a few years and the answer is partly...you don't, if you are hungry for commissions. You make yourself available. If you have showings/offer presentations/opens houses/previews every single night you kind of count yourself lucky. You make friends with other brokers and agents so that you can fill in for each other now and then (however, if an agent fills in for you at an open house and unagented people come in, they may pick them up as clients.)

But generally, if you had showings and offer presentations and everything else every day, you would be a pretty happy realtor. At that point many brokers would take on agents or junior agents and farm out the lower-value showings and open houses and so on to them in exchange for a part of the commission.

Please note: brokers and agents in Canada may be slightly different terminology than in the US.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:10 PM on April 14 [4 favorites]

Every RA I know has mornings (like 8am -10am) free and for some reason they go work out.

You can also interleave a lot of appointments. I was at a kids birthday party and at the end the dad popped out of the bathroom in a suit like Superman and dashed off to his showings.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 1:29 PM on April 15 [1 favorite]