No reason to cut short your showing time to hurry back to the office because you have other listing or closing activities to do. Your other team members do that.

What It Means to Be a Buyer Representative

Working as a buyer rep, you'll reply to ad calls and show houses. That's about it. Once your clients decide on a house, you'll hand them off to the lead agent for contract negotiation. Of course every team does things differently. Some lead agents allow their more experienced buyer reps to write up offers and negotiate contracts, but at least for your first few months, your lead agent should do that for you. By working within such a limited scope, you'll quickly gain experience in handling buyer clients and you'll also learn the housing market like your own backyard. One reason you'll learn so much faster is that you'll have so many more clients than if you try to go it alone. A good lead agent will have a formidable marketing plan that generates dozens of leads each week. Most new agents can't possibly afford to compete with that.

Once you've gained enough experience, you might want to move into a listing rep position. Again, you'll be able to concentrate on a single aspect of the business and learn at a much quicker pace. Once you gain enough experience listing and selling and establish a name for yourself, who knows, you may decide to become a lead agent yourself and build your own team. Most lead agents what you to become successful and will not stand in your way if you want to move forward.

Choosing the Right Lead Agent

Choosing the right person to work with is critical. Financially, you want to work with a top agent who generates a lot of leads. It's also important to choose an agent who is a good, patient teacher - someone who's going to help you learn as much as you can about the business and who cares about your success.

If you can't find the right team to work with, you may want to approach a single agent with the idea of working as a team. There still aren't many teams operating but the idea makes too much sense to ignore.

Talking with other agents at Realtor functions and paying attention to local advertising, you'll quickly learn who the top agents are in town. Another good idea is to speak with some of the brokers in town. They can recommend experienced agents who might be open to the idea of working as an apprentice. These brokers should also be good at spotting potential personality conflicts and can tell you whom to avoid.