All the right-wing reactionary weirdos in my area are all the same guy. Old, bearded, white, “Realtors”. Every single one of them. I’m convinced that becoming a Realtor is a sign of your desperate attempt to escape the class shift from petite-bourgeois to proletariat. Getting your license isn’t that hard, from my understanding.
Often they have failed businesses they are propping up with their Realtor day job. You’ll find them worming around in public comment on municipal zoning code. Sometimes they come in different flavors, maybe they’re the right wing 2A style, perhaps they’re a Christian Evangelical brand, or they’re a disgruntled “veteran” (gotta check their credentials on that stuff) motif. I have one in town who is all three, a figurative scoop of Neapolitan style reactionary garbage (all three flavors in one tub!).
The way capitalism squeezes these people, often forces them into this little Realtor mold. This isn’t some profound analysis, but I bet if we did some qualitative investigating, we’d find they’re all very similar.
It’s a relatively high-potential sales job with little barrier to entry, and it doesn’t sound like just sales. The “attempt to escape the class shift from petite-bourgeois to proletariat” makes perfect sense.
One interesting thing I learned is that the majority of Realtors are women. The average age of a Realtor is 49 while the median age is 60. The majority of them do not have degrees and almost all of them are independent contractors. Given the age, demographic, and level of education, it also sounds like Realtors could be the wives of failed “businessmen” picking up their husband’s slack to maintain their lifestyle. They are out of the “stay at home mom” age range, but because the husband was putting their upward mobility ahead of their wives’ financial independence, these women exit motherhood with no marketable skills. Realtor work, being low entry, makes it an easy transition back into working life.
This comment and the one you’re replying to really has me wondering how many fail. It’s a bit like “anyone can trade stocks and shares”, don’t something like 70% of them fail?
I’m seeing failure rates of 80% to 90% according to some stats I’m seeing after a quick google search. Reddit is full of failure stories and speculation.. The low bar keeps the pool of potential Realtors high and keeps the churn high as well. It’s also a path that is FULL of hustle and grind culture. The structure is also predatory as well. A real estate agent can sell homes and get a commission, but a real estate broker does the same, and can employ other agents. The broker gets a cut of the commissions of agents who work for them. These internal contradictions are likely what drive the high failure rate of real estate agents. If you can’t make it yourself, you need to become a broker and employ many agents under your name. You employ these agents as independent contractors, of which you get a cut of their commission. You have almost no payroll, and you don’t even have to sell a single house.