Selling real estate not as easy as it might sound
Mize: Selling real estate not as easy as it might sound

By Richard Mize

Published: April 21, 2007

Mike Cassidy is 55 and has been brokering homes sales as a Realtor for 34 years.

He's co-owner of Coldwell Banker Advantage in Oklahoma City.

He's the past president of the Oklahoma City Metro Association of Realtors, and is a member of the Oklahoma Real Estate Commission.

If anybody knows why there is such high turnover among real estate agents, he does. He expounded on the topic recently.

Q. Why the turnover?

A. Well, in the past you could get your real estate license in one week's time. We (the Real Estate Commission) changed that to where it takes two weeks. It takes 90 hours to get your real estate license, then you still have your provisional, which you have to get in the first year. It's been a very easy way to get in.

The other is getting the business. People don't call you, you have to call them. Initially, it's like opening up your own business. ...

If you were to go open up a restaurant or open up any type of business, not only would you have a lot of capital involved in it, but in those initial years, three to five years, you're going to put in a tremendous amount of time. You have to do that in real estate. It's usually the time. They're not willing to put in 50 to 60 hours a week. ...

If you're good at sales, then you'll get into the business. The problem is that it's a lot more complicated.

When I got into the business back in '73, it was very simple. You went to the savings-and-loan. They didn't really have credit reports back then. I'm sure they had some sort of reporting system, but you could go in and they'd take down the information and within a week you were approved on your loan.

Today it's not that way. You have to get all your information. If you were late on something eight years ago and it's still showing up on your credit report, they want a reason for it. It's a much more difficult process.

And that's what hurts someone who is just a good salesperson — because they have to become more dedicated to the close. They're going to have to work with the people: "OK, this is what you're going to need to get done.”... Unfortunately, you'll be checking on it and thinking everything is fine and then three days before closing they'll say, "Oh, we need this and this and this.”

Q. What did you want to be when you grew up?

A. My father was a doctor. He did his level best to get me to become a doctor. I actually worked for my father from the time I was 13 to probably 19 — you know, made rounds with him, worked in his office, did all sorts of things back then. ... But the more he pushed me in it, the more I decided I did not like working with sick people. That was not my deal. ...

But I will also tell you that my father taught me all my sales skills. When my father died in August of '77 at Southwest Community Hospital (now Integris Southwest Medical Center) he had over 50 patients in the hospital. Of course, back then that was the norm. He and I would talk. I guess by that time he realized, toward the end, that I was going to get into some sort of sales. He said that was part of what his job was. People would come in and they would need surgery and they would need different things. He'd say, "I had to sell them on that,” and I'd see how he would interact with people. I learned a lot of my sales skills from him. ...

Selling is not so much, in a surgery situation, saying, "Oh, you need this.” Selling is assuring them that everything's going to be fine. When people buy a house or list their house through a realty agent, they want to be assured that everything's going to be fine. They've heard all the horror stories.