Is Real Estate Hard? How Careers in Real Estate Differ in Difficulty

The National Association of Realtors estimates that the real estate sector contributes a jaw-dropping $4.9 trillion to the US economy each year. That means it makes up 18% of annual gross domestic product. 

In other words, the real estate industry generates a huge amount of money and jobs. 

People considering a career in real estate often start by asking “Is real estate hard?” The answer depends on what real estate-related career track you choose. It’s a lot harder to become a real estate attorney, for example, than to become a real estate agent, investor, or title worker. 

As you start answering the question of “How hard is real estate?”, begin with the various career paths within the industry.

Careers in Real Estate

There are nearly endless job titles in the real estate sector, but most fall under a few broad umbrella categories.

Real Estate Agent or Broker

When people wonder if real estate is hard, they often mean becoming a Realtor. It’s the most visible career path in real estate. 

Everyone knows what a real estate agent does: they represent home buyers and sellers to help close a sale. 

Or do they? It turns out that much of the work is actually marketing and prospecting for clients, not showing houses. “A huge percentage of the day-to-day work of a real estate agent involves finding clients,” explains Luke Babich of Clever Real Estate. “Agents need to build their own personal brand to attract clients, especially in large, oversaturated markets.”

Real estate agents must take a class, pass state and national exams (more on those later), and find a position working with a licensed real estate broker in order to represent home sellers or buyers. None of that is “hard” per se.

What’s hard is building a base of clients, and living entirely on commissions in the meantime. To succeed, you need to be comfortable living on unpredictable commission income, networking, and marketing yourself. You also need to love working with people, because you’ll do a lot of it.

Real Estate Appraiser

Appraisers estimate the market value of a property, usually on behalf of mortgage lenders. 

Before agreeing to issue a mortgage loan, lenders must verify the value of the property, which serves as their collateral for the loan. The appraiser analyzes local comparable property sales (“comps”), and compares the size, condition, location, and other factors of the target property to similar properties that sold recently nearby. 

Even though the homebuyer or owner pays for the appraisal, the end client is typically the bank or lender. To build a consistent business, appraisers must make a name for themselves with local lenders as reliable, timely, and trustworthy.

But once established, appraisers don’t spend as much time marketing as agents typically do. Think of it as branding yourself with a dozen local lenders instead of a million local residents. 

Appraisers spend much of their time visiting properties and assessing them, and don’t need the same sales skills that Realtors do. They must also take a class and exam to get licensed however. 

Home Inspector

Like appraisers, home inspectors visit properties to walk through and assess them. Unlike appraisers, home inspectors spend hours checking the condition of every component in the structure. They don’t do any market research on comparable sales. 

Home inspectors too must become licensed. It helps to have a working knowledge of mechanical systems and structures, but you don’t need to have a background as a contractor to become a home inspector.

Contracting & Construction

Contractors build, renovate, or repair properties. They could be as humble as a handyman to as grandiose as developers building $100 million apartment complexes. 

Anyone with a set of tools can work as an unlicensed handyman. To work as a licensed plumber, electrician, HVAC technician, or other skilled tradesman, you must pass an exam and typically apprentice under another specialist. 

To build new homes or commercial buildings, you need to learn not just the construction side of the business but also navigating permits and inspections. And because it costs so much money to build, well, anything, you’ll probably need to get comfortable with financing deals or raising capital. 

Real Estate Investing

Likewise, anyone can invest in real estate. 

Residential strategies vary from flipping houses to wholesaling real estate to buying rental properties to mobile homes. But you can also take a less obvious route and flip land parcels, buy entire mobile home parks, invest in storage facilities, or syndicate commercial properties, among other ideas.  

How hard is real estate investing? It can be as simple as writing a check as a silent partner on a property, or as complicated as syndicating a 200-unit apartment community. Consider starting simple with passive real estate investments such as crowdfunding. If you want a more hands-on approach, you can start learning how to invest in real estate as an active investor. (More on how to get started in real estate momentarily.)

Title, Law, Accounting, Lending, & Adjacent Industries

There are a dozen other paths you can take in the real estate industry. 

You can work for a title company, reviewing title histories or serving as a settlement agent. You can work as a real estate attorney, or real estate accountant, or city housing inspector. 

For that matter, you could work on the financing side handling loans. That could mean residential mortgage loans of course, or it could mean portfolio loans or commercial loans or something else entirely. I got my own start in the industry working for a hard money lender. 

Within each of these careers are even more paths. For example, mortgage lenders employ not just loan officers but also processors, underwriters, managers, interest rate analysts, and more. 

Is real estate hard, in any of these career tracks? It typically depends on the requirements to practice. It takes time and money to go to law school, or to get your Certified Public Accountant accreditation. Anyone can lend hard money loans — but if you do it poorly, you won’t stay in business long. You need to learn the ropes by working for someone else with more experience before you can set out on your own. 

The Challenges of Real Estate Investing

Real estate investing comes with its own barriers to entry and challenges. But those challenges vary depending on the investing strategy you choose.

For example, wholesaling real estate requires you to master two broad skills: finding great deals and building a buyers list. Even within those, each requires several micro-skills. Finding great deals involves choosing a strategy for finding off-market leads, setting up direct mail or other marketing campaigns, measuring return on investment on each marketing channel, and more. 

“Anyone can master the skills of real estate investing with education and practice,” says Alexandra Alvarado of the American Apartment Owners Association. “But the stakes are high, as you typically put tens or hundreds of thousands on the line every time you buy an investment property.” 

Investors must also learn how to follow real estate market trends. Some markets are hard to buy in, but easy to sell — or vice versa. As an investor, you need to monitor your local real estate market alongside national trends, understand where we are in the housing cycle, and adjust your strategy accordingly. 

For instance, in a buyer’s market you may decide to buy and hold rather than flip houses. When a seller’s market comes around, you may decide to shift your focus to disposition. 

Is real estate hard as an investor? It depends on your willingness to learn without a structured education program, your discipline in following market trends, and your flexibility in adapting to an ever-changing market. 

Starting Out in Real Estate Investment

To get started in real estate investing, first choose an investment strategy that fits your financial goals. 

If you want passive income, explore lending private notes, or perhaps investing in turnkey rental properties. If you want to build a scalable real estate business, wholesaling properties often makes a great fit. You can hire and train VAs and other low-wage employees to handle much of the marketing, leaving you to focus on the higher-skill work. 

Once you’ve chosen a niche, find a mentor with a strong track record in that niche. That could mean finding a senior partner to apprentice under, or a course, or a mastermind group of investors. But if you don’t find a mentor, you’ll make countless avoidable mistakes that can cost you hundreds of thousands. I should know — in my arrogance as a young investor, I thought I could go it alone. 

I paid dearly for my hubris.

As you start working with a real estate investing mentor, start putting systems in place to standardize your processes. What can you automate with a real estate CRM? What could you delegate to an assistant? Put standard operating procedures in place early, refine them as you gain experience, and then scale at your leisure. 

You don’t need a ton of money to start investing in real estate. You do need to be willing to do the grunt work for a senior partner as you learn how to invest. Forget the financing component in the beginning, and simply focus on learning everything you can from an experienced investor. 

Is the Real Estate Exam Hard?

Many novices entering the industry consider getting their real estate license. Some primarily want to work as a real estate agent, others see it as a competitive advantage for their investments. 

Note that the real estate class and exam don’t cover many practical skills of working as a Realtor. They largely cover federal and state real estate laws, to ensure you don’t breach them as an agent. Education requirements vary by state, with most in the range of 60-80 hours, and some as high as 135 (California) or even 200 (Texas). 

How hard is the real estate exam? Broadly speaking, it’s on the easy side compared to other finance compliance exams such as the Series 7. But you still have to pay attention to the real estate course lessons, take detailed notes, and take as many practice exams as you can before the real one. 

Technically, you take two multiple-choice exams — one each for federal and state laws. Don’t get discouraged if you fail one or both of the exams the first time you take them. You can try again. 

Look up local real estate classes that satisfy the education requirements, and find one with strong reviews and a high exam pass rate. 

Once you pass the real estate exam, your real education begins: the practical skills of working as a real estate salesperson. Those you typically learn from your broker, so find a broker that offers comprehensive onboarding and on-the-job training. 

Final Thoughts

The greatest mistake I see novice real estate investors make is assuming they understand the fundamentals. 

Yes, you’ve lived in a real property your whole life, and you understand the business model of leasing or flipping homes. But that doesn’t mean you know how to forecast cash flow (it’s not the rent minus the mortgage), or calculate the maximum allowable offer for a wholesale property. 

How hard is real estate? It depends. Most real estate careers don’t require much in the way of formal education or certifications, but that doesn’t mean they don’t require dozens of micro-skills that can take years to master. Have the humility to learn from expert mentors — and the confidence to take the first steps down the path of a career in real estate.