Living Houston Is Launching Its Mentorship Program For New And Seasoned Agents
About 80% of agents interviewing with Living Houston say they want mentorship. Sometimes, they aren’t sure what that means, but they’ve been told they need a mentor somewhere in their journey. As a new REALTOR®, having a mentor to guide you every step of the way would be ideal. One of the most frequent requests from agents interested in joining LH is to shadow someone, and following someone in real estate is often completely unrealistic. The idea sounds great in theory, but real estate happens 24 hours a day, so you would need to spend 30 days with someone and eat, sleep, and breathe their entire life to learn from them.
What Is The Role Of A Mentor?
People often consider a mentor a hand-holder, but that is far from the description. Daily, if you have a question like, “What goes in line four of a contract?” that’s not what a mentor is for. A mentor is not an information desk. If you need this kind of real estate help, you can use something like Living Houston’s help desk, ASK Living Houston. Our Broker, Laura Weisman, designed an online space to fill this much-needed gap between real estate classes and becoming a practicing REALTOR®. Ask Living Houston allows agents to ask their real estate related questions and have them answered by an expert promptly as often as needed.
A mentor is someone who is respected in their field and provides valuable advice, although they don’t necessarily have to work in the same industry as you. They offer guidance, support, and knowledge to someone with less experience. A mentor has the wisdom to help you develop skills, achieve goals, and navigate challenges. They offer helpful critiques and give feedback to help you grow. Whenever you need to drum up business or when you’re encountering difficulties with clients, they’re the person you can turn to for help. However, finding an individual like this can be tricky.
How To Have A Mentor In Real Estate
There are three ways you can have a mentor as a REALTOR®.
1. Be an assistant to a REALTOR® and work your way up. Shadowing a REALTOR® as a REALTOR® doesn’t work because they don’t have time to help you run your business while running their own. However, if you become an assistant to a REALTOR® and help them run their business, you will learn from them and eventually have the foundation you need to work your way up and branch out on your own.
2. You can work on a team. A team in real estate is a group of agents who work as individuals and as a group. Joining a team gives you access to REALTORS®, who may be more inclined to help you when you’re struggling or come across things you haven’t experienced yet because your success is directly correlated to the team’s success.
3. Spend time finding a real estate agent to mentor you. This sounds easy enough, but finding a REALTOR® who is willing to mentor you in the way a new agent needs to be mentored is tough. If you’re looking for someone to hold your hand and teach you the ropes, you will want someone successful to show you the way. One example of a mentor would be a retired real estate expert who has been in the business for 30 years and could be your go-to person. The problem is successful agents don’t have time for that. So how do you incentivize them to teach you? With compensation.
Living Houston’s Mentorship Program
Living Houston is excited to offer this new and innovative way to serve agents in our brokerage. This program benefits new agents by offering them a partnership with a seasoned agent they can have on speed dial, which they can go to for guidance. And it helps established agents who can apply to be mentors to generate an additional income stream for themselves as REALTORS®.
Living Houston accommodates new agents, which many real estate brokerages don’t do. Many brokerages only accept new agents if you’ve had your license for at least a year or with other stipulations. Living Houston recognizes the need for a brokerage that takes new agents and has many processes to help them succeed if they’re willing to do the work. New agents, in particular, often need guidance and mentorship to make it in real estate. And the mentorship program was born out of this need.
At Living Houston, an agent can sign up to be mentored, and our most seasoned agents can sign up to be a mentor. A new agent, whether brand new or someone who took five years off and is coming back to real estate, instead of looking at the broker to fulfill all their needs, will have the option to be paired with one of our veteran agents who will be readily available. The mentor agent gets 10% of any deal they help the new agent close. This partnership benefits both parties involved and creates a healthy relationship based on trust and reciprocity.
Learn More About Agent Life With Living Houston
If you’re interested in growing your real estate career through mentorship or being a mentor to new agents, Living Houston may be the brokerage for you. To learn more, go to joinlivinghouston.com. We can’t wait to hear from you.
