This is the last blog in my series on whether I believe being a realtor is a great side hustle. I am now in my 3rd year of being a part time realtor. I must confess, there is very little easy about being a realtor. Especially if its a part time gig. It is is very challenging given I have a family that requires significant attention. But I don’t want to give away the ending. Lets get into it! Bear with me while I go into my history prior to discussing this side hustle.
20 years ago
I started in real estate when I was 29. What I mean by that is I bought my first house at that age. I was in the Air Force in my early twenties so because of that I was able to take advantage of the VA Loan. Which was great because that meant I didn’t need a down payment. It was a duplex and half of it was already rented out. It was nice because that paid for the majority of my monthly mortgage.
While I lived on one side of the duplex, I fixed it up. I learned a lot about houses and what it takes to renovate one while I was there. I will say, much of the work I did was trial and error but to this day most of the work I did seems to be holding up. I made tons of mistakes though. But I would not change a thing. I used the knowledge I gained from that time period on fixing and repairing the other properties that I eventually owned.
Once I fixed up the side I lived on, the other side became available. So, I moved into it and fixed that side up. I lived there for about 5 years. Once I moved out I rented both sides and bought a place on the lake that I always wanted. The duplex also paid for that place. I realized at that time, that if done properly, I could live for free and not have wot worry whether I had to work a high paying job or not. Then, I did nothing for another 5 years.
10 Years Ago
As mentioned, I didn’t buy any more properties for almost 10 years. I just worked, bought whatever toys I wanted and tried to enjoy life. Then, I met my current wife. She had a house of her own. We decided after we got married at the youthful age of 40 that we were going to buy a place of our own and rent hers out. Well, we did that and that was nice. We got a taste of that life and we really enjoyed dealing with the tenants.
Our interest was sparked. It just so happened my parents were moving into another home and my wife and I thought it would be a good idea to buy their old one from them. That’s exactly what we did. We made even more money and again, it was nice. Then we decided to move out of the home we were in and guess what, we rented it out. It was the biggest house we had rented and as such, it brought in substantially more money. These sets of events brought us to about 3 years ago.
3 years Ago.
At that time, my wife and I were really getting serious about wanting to start a business and buy more rentals. That is when we came up with the idea of opening a property management company. Come to find out, you can’t just do that unless you have a Real Estate Brokers license. That is if you want to manage other peoples properties. Then I found out, you can’t become a broker unless you were a licensed real estate agent for 2 years.
Once I finally got my realtor license, which took about 6 months, Covid hit. That really slowed me down from gaining experience. However, by the beginning of 2021, I hit the ground running. Well, as much as I can for a part time real estate sales person. In 2021, I sold a whopping total of 3 homes. I know, that’s not much but I learned a lot about selling homes and what it takes to ‘Get the job done’. Throughout the remainder of the year I showed homes, helped my team mates out and tried to find the time to get out and get some sales.
Getting Sales in real estate while working full time
My first sale was in January 2021. I was a buyers agent to someone who was looking for a home in the range of 300k. Since it was my first sale, I had to spend what seemed like an endless number of hours trying to dot my ‘i’s and cross my ‘t’s. All told, to sell my first home, it took with showings and buying the house, about 26 hours. Most of the time was in the evenings and weekends, however, I had to do some stuff during the day while I was working at my other job. That actually ended up being a bigger challenge than I anticipated. The other two came in March and then another in April. All the homes ended up being about 25-30 hours worth of work for that time period. That doesn’t seem like much but when you have a full time job you end up working 50- 60 hours. That is a lot.
Then in 2022, my full time job started to get extremely busy and my travel ramped up to almost 50% of the time for many months. You just can’t sell homes if you are not in town. So I haven’t sold a home since. I have helped my team out with open houses from time to time but that doesn’t pay unless I get a sell during that window.
All told in 2021 I made $5083.55 working about 78 hours. That averages about $65 / hour. Below is a breakdown of my expenses.
| Commission Checks | $9180 |
| Expenses | $1517.12 |
| Gas | $284.33 |
| Taxes | $2295 |
| Total | $5083.55 |
Summary
I will admit the money is great. Who wouldn’t want to work for $65 per hour. In my opinion, the problem is the passive versus active argument when it comes to side hustles. This side hustle pays well, there is not doubt. However, there is nothing passive about it. I have a new respect for full time realtors. I got lucky really, the homes I was an agent on were fairly high in value for this area. I think all told, I sold about $750+ thousand dollars worth of homes. In my neck of the woods homes typically go for a lot less than what I sold them for.
The Claim
Being a realtor for a side hustle makes you bank? Answer….Without a doubt you can make some serious money for a side hustle. This claim is legit!
What’s next in my real estate life
I have recently passed my brokers test and am submitting all of my paperwork to officially be a Designated Broker of my own company. The company is going to revolve around property management but as a broker I can sell and buy homes for customers as well. This will be yet another side hustle for me and I will let you know how that one turns out as well.
If you like this blog and would like to see my other side hustles. Please follow this link ‘View All Side Hustles’.