By Maria Valenzuela


According to salary.com, a typical real estate agent in the United States receives a median salary of $36,552. This result was from a Certified Compensation Professionals' analysis from the surveyed data collected from thousands of HR departments of all sizes, industries and geographies.

A real estate agent job can be a lucrative job option, but for some, it is not a full-time career option. An agent earns a commission whenever they close a deal. In this case, this type of real estate agents does not necessarily follow regular office hours because they are mobile and just go about whenever clients need them. On the other hand, there are some agents who work with a broker or in real estate firms and therefore work as employees who receive pre-determined salaries regardless if they successfully close a deal or not.

There exists another type of agent called freelance real estate agents. They are the ones who don't receive regular paychecks because they might be earning in another business and real estate deals is an additional source of income. In this case, they can decide or negotiate with a broker or firm about their service charges since they are working independently.

On the hand, commissions are based on their business volume. So if an agent is dealing with a high volume transaction, they will surely earn a proportionately higher income since commission when a deal is made is a set percentage of the money that serves as remuneration for services rendered.

Real estate agents are employed or may be rendering their services to different agencies. Thus, salary varies from agency to agency. While their pay is mostly based on the number of real estate deals they have closed, the annual pay varies. Winter months promise a fewer real estate transaction, but moves up during the summer and fall months. The fact still remains that it is really difficult to put a figure on the actual amount of money agents earn. We can just have a mean expected salary for every transaction is different from the other and where factors like skill, commitment and luck also matters.




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