Selecting a Broker

Since the State of Illinois requires that every prospective agent take and pass a prelicense course (currently 45 hours) and then pass a State exam, the uninformed would believe they were prepared to sell a home. Not true of course, the process is not unlike taking driver’s education and then the driver’s test. The new agent is no more prepared to service a real estate client than the new driver is to handle rush hour in Chicago.

In Illinois you need to find a broker to sponsor you into the business, the choice of company should be made, to a large degree, on how much training you’ll receive. There are other factors to consider, reputation of the broker (company), whether the company has National name recognition (Prudential, for instance) or is a small local operation, and market share, to name a few. While you don’t want to make the wrong choice in the beginning, you are not locked into the broker with whom you begin. You can change if you’ve made a mistake.

Probably the most important thing in selecting the broker is how you “feel” about the people you’ll be working with and for. What are the better brokers looking for in an agent? The State requires (generally) that you be at least 21, have a high school education or equivalent, and be of high moral character, the broker will look for general characteristics. While the born salesman may find a career in real estate, it seems to me that the agent we want to hire is one dedicated to making this his or her career, understands that it will be difficult in the beginning, is not overly introverted, and, above all, is a nice person.