Make It or Break It
Our friends at EstateVue blogged about a milestone in the future of real estate agents earlier this week: the new offering of a Master of Real Estate Degree Program by NAR University. We would like to actually elaborate on this topic based on new information released today by the Boston Business Journal, stating that in the past year more people have become listed real estate agents within the past year than in the past decade.
These pieces of information are more important than you would assume. From where we’re sitting, it seems as though there could very well be a divide in the agent world based on these two articles. The saturation of the real estate market will undoubtedly increase market competition and will lead all participants to look for ways to set themselves apart from the competition through many routes, whether they be through print advertising, digital marketing, re-branding, flyering mailboxes, etc. However, one of the most prominent methods to creating personal advantages over the competition is through higher education, and by getting those tasty little letters to legally sign after your name.
Our predictions are simple. There are clearly a lot of real estate agents who are currently entering or who are already engaged in the real estate market. So what’s the next step for these agents to get the upper hand on one another? The most obvious choice would be that of the new Degree Program. Why? Well, let’s put it this way. Who would you trust more with your finances: somebody who successfully completed their course/certification, or somebody who went to school and got a degree in their field? We are definitely leaning more towards the candidate with the higher education, as would most people. This leaves us with a predictable divide between agents who do or don’t have degrees for the simple reason that to a lot of people degrees present more education and knowledge during introductions, which could start to be a deal-maker or a deal-breaker, depending on which piece of paper you have framed in your office.
Do you think we’re crazy? Will this new Degree Program fail, or prevail? Will this higher education become an industry standard, or an unnecessary additive? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter.
photo courtesy of http://polandian.home.pl/index.php/2011/01/23/handshake-habits-and-headaches/
