Becoming a Real Estate Agent by Tom Chiarella

Author:Tom Chiarella
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

COMMERCIAL/MIXED USE

THE CHICAGO SKY IS a flaming winter blue. Antje Gehrken’s Mercedes sits in a decaying parking lot in the north-side suburb of Waukegan. Gehrken stands at the rear of her car, changing shoes. Slips off her dress shoes, replaces them with a pair of ankle-high zip-up 80s boots caked in mud. Dress shoes once, now trashed, you might say. There’s a plunger in the trunk too, its head buried in a plastic shopping bag. She grabs it and shuts the trunk.

This is a commercial real estate showing. She represents the seller, a bank forced to foreclose six months prior. She is working alone today, as agent to the seller. Gehrken’s firm, A.R.E. Partners, primarily lists residential sales, with occasional crossovers into small commercial offerings.

As a real estate broker, Gehrken has the designation which allows her to operate in commercial real estate. So a day like this one, showing the former childcare center (and mixed-use building), is not beyond her ken. But she prefers the chemistry of residential real estate.

Commercial real estate is classified as property that brings or has the potential to bring income. It is non-residential, which means that it’s not being purchased as a residence for the buyer. In most states, a commercial real estate agent requires additional training. The field is more lucrative, however. The average residential Realtor made a little more than $41,000 in 2015 (a figure that includes all real estate agents, including those who only do the job part-time), whereas the average commercial real estate agent netted $135,000 in the same year. The reasons are myriad. Title work is more complicated, financing plans are more speculative. Zoning requirements (parking specifications, fire suppression, signage, shared maintenance, and more) can be a tangle. Commercial real estate properties are most often far larger than traditional residential ones (think square feet). And the price of commercial real estate is generally far higher than residential property because of income potential.

While 63 percent of residential Realtors are women, industry estimates show that women make up only 35 percent of the commercial real estate agents, with the majority of them working in asset management rather than active sales. Commercial real estate agents make more money, and in commercial real estate, men average $150,000 a year, whereas women average closer to $130,000. The gender gap is undeniable.

Gehrken doesn’t want to fight that battle. She sees it as a reinforcement of why women gravitate to residential sales. “Women work for themselves in residential real estate. What they make is clearly tied to the effort they give it, without anyone getting in the way,” she says. “In this job, I move around, and work my own hours. I talk to a lot of people all day. That’s what I want from the work.” Commercial real estate feels male to her. “It’s pretty corporate. Pretty hormonal. It feels more like an office sport.”

Beyond that, the jargon of commercial real estate is unfamiliar to most homebuyers. It’s loaded with terms such as “triple net lease”

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