Cindy Rack is her name and real estate is her game.
On Friday, Nov. 1, as part of the Career Spotlight Series hosted by the BPHS Counseling Department, Mrs. Rack, Listing Agent for Keller Williams, spoke to students about a career in real estate.
Mrs. Rack has been in sales and marketing her whole entire career, but in 2006 she had an epiphany and wanted to find a career where she makes her own hours and for her to build a business that would help support her family. She decided to land a career in real estate.
Though only having only seven years of this business under her belt, Mrs. Rack has already found the business lucrative and beneficial. She showed a group of around twenty students what three main areas of real estate you can get into: flipping, investor, or realtor/broker.
Flipping is buying property to clean up the house and then selling or renting out the house on the market. In order to do this, Mrs. Rack said, “You have to have the funds to purchase the house. You also have to be good at projects and with people.”
Investors deal with long term rental properties, residential or commercial. Residential deals with individuals while commercial deals with businesses. “If you want to take this path you can’t be a sucker, you have to have internal fortitude,” Mrs. Rack said.
Last but not least, Mrs. Rack talked about the realtor/broker path. This means you are either a buyer or a seller agent. You have to work with a team of people to try to buy or sell houses. Networking is a skill that you will have to be adept in for this path. “You have to have connections. Many of my clients were founded on connections. You have to find your own clients, the company does not give them for you,” Mrs. Rack said.
There are many rewards to being in this business. You make your own schedule and appointments, and decide how much money you want to make. There is a widespread variety on how much money you make in this business. You can work with small areas and small projects or you can be in commercial real estate and work with buildings and companies. The most important reward is the satisfaction of working in it. You are contributing to changing many people’s lives.
Although there are rewards to being in real estate there are also stresses to being in this profession as well. The main one is you do not get a paycheck; you work on commission, and so if you don’t find property or people, you do not get paid. Another issue is that since it is your business, there are start-up costs for marketing and investing. The most crucial stress is monthly expenses. Since it is your property, you have to take care of the property’s bills and what happens to it.
All in all, real estate can be a very interesting field to get into for some people. Mrs. Rack said,”The most important thing to have in this business is an entrepreneurial spirit. You have to want to do this and take risks on the way. You either get a high risk big reward or high risk no reward. You have to be savvy with your money and feel what you think is best.”