Starting Real Estate

Real Estate Finance, here I come again. After almost a year–I’m signing up again. This time, I’ll just be taking this one class. It’s the same teacher as last time.

I finally did it. Finished my first Real Estate course. In hindsight, I’m very glad I took the course the way I took it, online, one month, through a JC. The best thing about it was that it forced me to keep up. Some people have the skills and motivation to chug through indefinitely, but I found the fact that there was so much to do and so little time kind of empowering. I knew that I had to get it done or else I’d have to take it over. I didn’t figure out the final was today rather than on Friday until the end of weekend, so the last few days I went through half of the course material. I took the midterm last night and the final this afternoon.

What’s Principles of Real Estate all about? It’s an overview of the entire field and it’s great that that’s the first one we get to study. I found a lot of it very lawyerish, with laws and terms everywhere, but it gives some really interesting insights into how money and property works. Although at first I thought I liked a different book more, I’m actually really happy with the Huber’s California Real Estate Principles. It does a great job and has solid breakdowns of everything. After taking notes from it and doing the quizzes I feel I learned a whole lot.

So what’s the plan now? Further studies: Real Estate Practice and Real Estate Financing or Economics. I really want to take an online business course, but I think staying healthy and getting at least five hours of sleep might be worth not taking on too much. Licensing: sign up to take the test at the end of the semester. Work: take the time to visit a few Real Estate offices, shadow a sales agent, appraiser, and broker within the month and a half.

Haven’t heard from the job yet.

Amazingly enough though, it turns out getting started is really easy. To get going, all a person needs to do is take the Principles course and pass the DRE exam. This gives a conditional eighteen month license. If during these eighteen months the person finishes Practice and another course, the license can become four-year. To maintain this license a person just needs to keep taking courses (45 hours for four years). Isn’t that fantastic, your required to keep learning. To become a broker, one must take a few additional courses (eight total) and have two years of experience or a BA/BS degree.

This just blows my mind. If a person started taking these courses in high school, they could become a broker by twenty (you must be eighteen to get any of the licenses). I really wish I explored all my options before going to a big university and getting a degree before figuring out something I’m passionate about. At least I’m taking some steps now.

I finally logged in and took a look at the materials and course outline and assignments. The Principles course is intense. It’s at least two to five hours daily. I’m glad I’ll be able to learn a lot, but unfortunately, working and studying at the same time, I cannot take both principles and practice together. On the bright side, Practice is offered next semester, also online, so I will most likely take it then. My first assignment (aside from reading and quizes) involves researching the requirements for getting into the profession and the steps for and after lisencing. I did some research today, that has me thinking it’s possible to take all my coursework online, which is convenient, but perhaps a bit harder (as discussed in a previous post). We’ll see how this course turns out.

Also, I found an absolutely ideal job. It’s at a real estate office and I applied tonight. Again, I’ll kee you posted. Planning to get up in five hours to start studying and to change classes. Goodnight.