Real estate agents, can they still make money?

Near a community in Shangdi, Beijing, three real estate brokerage stores are close to each other. Photo by Chen Candle

Without buying and selling, there is no income

Text|Caijing Xi Chen Candle Wang Wentong

Editor|Yu Le

"The last time (I sold a house)? was about two or three years ago," Ma Yecheng, who was sitting across from me, was a little stumbling, "I haven't been able to do well in the past two years." ”

After resigning from a job with a monthly salary of about 6,000 yuan in 2016, Ma Yecheng changed careers and joined Lianjia under the introduction of a friend, and his performance that year reached more than 600,000 yuan. In the golden age of real estate, that number was not remarkable. At that time, there were not a few intermediaries with an annual income of one million, and a colleague of Ma Yecheng created a performance of more than 4 million yuan a year.

Circumstances change with the passage of time. The era of rising housing prices and enthusiastic transactions has passed, and the real estate market has entered the stock stage. In 2022, the sales area of commercial housing in China will be 1.36 billion square meters, a decrease of 220 million square meters compared with 2016. Taking Beijing as an example, 216,000 commercial houses and 314,000 second-hand houses were traded in 2016, but in 2022, the transaction volume of commercial houses and second-hand houses will only be 127,000 and 160,000 respectively, both of which are nearly halved.

When was the last time you sold your home? This question can be a bit sharp and a little cruel to many agents.

Cao Anhua has been working in Lianjia for nearly ten years, buying a house and a family with the money he earns. Since the beginning of the epidemic, his performance has plummeted, and it takes two or three months to close a set at the bleakest time. "I almost live on the basic salary, I have a mortgage to repay, my children are still in school, and I don't dare to add another chicken leg to lunch at lunch. ”

According to the "2023 Million Real Estate Agents Survival Report" released by 58.com and Anjuke, in 2023, 36.5% of brokers will have a basic salary, a year-on-year decrease of 2.1%, and among brokers with a basic salary, the concentration of basic salary will be 1,000-3,000 yuan, accounting for 64.2%.

For most brokers, the bulk of the income comes from commissions, with a higher commission rate for buy and sell orders than for lease orders. But even in the buying and selling business, the actual income of the broker is not as high as described in the rumor that "no orders for half a year, bills for half a year". Under normal circumstances, 2% of the transaction price is the intermediary fee, on which 15% of the platform fee is deducted, and then it is amortized layer by layer according to the workload and rank of the broker.

Take Zeng Ping, who works for another company, as an example, the last time he sold the house was sold at a price of 12.5 million, after deducting a series of expenses, his personal performance was more than 70,000 yuan, but after multiplying it by the 30% commission ratio, the actual pre-tax income was only more than 20,000 yuan.

Among them, 30% of the points correspond to the A1-A3 of the broker level, and the highest level of A12 points is as high as 75%. When the real estate market is hot, the transaction volume of the broker is large, the level is improved quickly, the corresponding increase point is high, and the income received is correspondingly higher. Now it is the opposite: no orders for a long time, the level is declining, and the commission of a single transaction is low, forming a vicious circle, and the "gold" broker of Zeng Ping's store once dropped from A12 in 2019 to A5 this year, and left a few months ago.

According to the "2020 Real Estate Agent Employment Report", 57% of brokers with more than 10 years of experience earned more than 200,000 yuan in 2019. However, the 2022 survey data shows that this proportion has dropped to 41.8%.

Persistence or leaving is a difficult choice in front of everyone.

The low-frequency industry has encountered a downturn

At around 10 a.m. on Sunday, Cao Anhua put on a white shirt, trousers, a badge and a large water bottle, and started work as usual. He first drove from the store in Tongzhou District, Beijing to Chaoyang District to pick up customers, and then took customers to see the new properties they had booked.

Such a late start time and such a long distance were unimaginable to him a few years ago. At that time, he was busy from six or seven o'clock in the morning to more than ten o'clock in the evening every day, and he rarely needed to take a cross-district to see. Now that there is less business, it would be nice to have the opportunity to show it. Most of the time, he can only sit in the store and sort out the customer information and housing information at hand, or ask the customers he has seen about his current willingness to buy and rent a house, so as to maintain the relationship with the customer.

Behind the decline in transaction volume is a weakening buying momentum and an oversupplied buyer's market.

Zeng Ping's store is located in the financial street of Beijing's Xicheng District, where thousands of financial institutions are gathered, and at the same time, it has the resources of the top schools of the Experimental No. 2 Primary School, the No. 4 Middle School and the No. 8 Middle School of Beijing Normal University, and the middle school attached to Beijing Normal University, so it is not an exaggeration to say that it is the financial center and education center of the entire capital and even the whole country.

However, even in this "top school district", fewer and fewer people are willing to pay for high housing prices. Zeng Ping's store could still make four or five orders a month two years ago, but now it is good to be able to open one or two orders. Employees mainly earn from basic salaries and rental businesses.

In Zeng Ping's view, the current buyers basically hold a kind of mentality: they have clear needs but are not in a hurry to move in, they only need to wait for a suitable time, and then start immediately when they see a suitable offer for a house that meets their needs. It's not just buyers who have a wait-and-see attitude, but sellers are the same - "they are worried that they will sell cheaply, and if they don't reduce the price for a long time, the house will not be sold." ”

Buyers are more cautious, and the transmission to the broker means higher information costs and longer transaction cycles.

A number of Beijing-based agents said that they not only have to follow up with their clients about the target properties, but also report the sales of other similar types in the same area or community in real time. For example, if a customer takes a fancy to a house, and it has just sold a set upstairs, the broker will tell the customer the transaction price as soon as possible, "at least let him know the current market, how much others have spent to buy it, and whether it is a loss or a value to buy now." ”

According to Ma Yecheng, "real estate transactions themselves are a low-frequency industry", coupled with the overall contraction of market demand, the difficulty of closing a transaction has become even more difficult.

When will the customer place an order? Will someone else place the order? These are all unknowns. But even with all the uncertainties, brokers have to continue to develop and maintain their clients, waiting for an agreement that will be fulfilled like Godot.

Rent drops and can't rent out a house

Even for the rental business, which has a higher frequency of transactions, the situation in recent years has not been optimistic.

According to the "Report on the Development of China's Housing Rental Market in the Third Quarter of 2023" jointly released by Weifang Research Institute and others, the performance of housing rents in first-tier cities is less than expected and is generally declining. Except for Shenzhen, which increased slightly year-on-year, housing rents in other first-tier cities showed a downward trend both month-on-month and year-on-year. Among them, Shanghai fell the most, down 2.94% year-on-year.

Although rents have fallen, houses have become more difficult to rent out. According to the data of the Shell Research Institute, the transaction cycle of housing and tourists in the fourth quarter of the country's key cities was 56.7 days and 11.5 days respectively, an increase of 2.7 days year-on-year, and the transaction cycle of tourists was extended by 1 day year-on-year.

The agent's more intuitive feeling is that the effective rental belt is reduced.

Xiaowei's brokerage company has quantitative requirements for employees, at least 2 times from Monday to Thursday, and at least 3 times from Friday to Sunday, because weekends are rest days, and there are relatively more people who have time to see houses.

The last time I met with Xiaowei, she was dragged to participate in the company's centralized invitation because she had too few shows in the last cycle. Those who do not meet the standard of viewing that week must attend the meeting, and they must contact the customer organization on the spot to take the tour, and they will be accompanied by a manager on the way.

There are two types of takes, effective and invalid, and the difference between the two is whether there are trading results. Xiaowei has completed the transaction task of the month in the middle of the month, because the lease itself has a short cycle, which is not as difficult as buying and selling, and the reason why it still needs to be shown is to "drain".

"Shell is equivalent to Taobao, and individuals are equivalent to stores, if the store has a high number of views and transactions, it is equivalent to traffic, and it will become that kind of good store, and we will only attract customers if we have a large number of views, so I need to bring a lot of views, so that it will be favored by customers on the platform." ”

In order to expand the source of customers, some brokers will buy the virtual booth provided by the platform, that is, the recommended broker avatar floating window on the listing information page.

According to Ma Yecheng's recollection, his company launched a virtual booth in 2020, and brokers who bought booths could theoretically gain more exposure and be more likely to be contacted by customers, but the reality was not so ideal.

It is reported that when the booth was first launched, many people bought it, because everyone wanted to try it and hope to get more customers. But like all recommendation algorithms, the virtual booth is like an unfathomable black box into which the broker throws a coin and doesn't necessarily hear the repercussions. After the heat passed, there were very few colleagues around him who were still buying booths, "I didn't sign the order in the first place, and I had to invest thousands of yuan in it a month, but it didn't have any effect, and the gains outweighed the losses." ”

As for the time when he didn't take it to see, the agent was not idle.

According to Ma Yecheng, the store will set many indicators for brokers, such as at least 80% customer contact rate and 50% face-to-face visit rate every week. In addition, the agent also has to forward the WeChat circle of friends and be responsible for recruitment, "I won't let you be idle." Do you think that other people's customers and landlords are waiting for you? You have to 'touch the fish' and you can't make any money. ”

It is more difficult for an old agent to change careers than a newcomer

Is real estate agent still a promising profession? Different people have different answers.

Sun Qian started working as a real estate agent in mid-2021 and left in November this year to work in the automotive industry. Although it is still a sale, it is less difficult to trade a car than a house: "After all, the house cannot move a large amount of money, so there are more points to consider and the cycle is longer." Recently, it is becoming more and more difficult for customers to buy a house, and sometimes they are paying backwards every month without billing. ”

Others, although they have not left, are only using the work of brokers as a springboard for the transition.

Cao Lili graduated from a 985 university, and after graduation, she tried to take the postgraduate entrance examination and the public entrance examination, but all failed. After weighing up, she chose to join an agency in Shanghai, and by the end of 2023, she would have just completed one year. The first is that the time of this job is relatively more flexible, the second is that there is a basic salary as a backing, and there is money in the account every month, which is more reassuring than taking the off-the-job examination, and the third is that although she is "fishing", everyone's performance is not very good.

On the desktop, there are maps of housing prices and housing documents in the whole district, and there are public examination books and English notes in the drawers, which is the ice and fire in Cao Lili's heart. "I want to do it first, at least with some income, and then I still want to continue to take the exam. ”

She usually comes to the company earlier than other colleagues to read some exam books before starting the day's work. If there is a show or other work, she will try to complete it. But when she doesn't have a job, when other colleagues are busy sorting out materials and retaining customers, she will use mobile phone software to secretly memorize words and memorize notes. Taking advantage of the lunch break, other colleagues who do not have the task of looking at the house meet for dinner in twos and threes, and she will seize the time to read a few books, do a few questions, and study late at night after work.

More people have thought about leaving but have no way out, and are stuck in a dilemma.

Ma Yecheng, Cao Anhua and Zeng Ping all had thoughts of resigning, but none of them took action. In addition to Ma Yecheng, who has not yet started a family, the other two have families and children to raise, because their education is not high, and resigning is not a job change for them, but unemployment.

"Where else can I go if I leave my current company? The platform here is large, there are many customers, at least there is income every month, and my friends in other intermediaries have no income during the epidemic, and most of them have been forced to change careers. Cao Anhua said.

According to the August 2023 National Real Estate Brokerage Industry Monthly Report released by 58 Anjuke Research Institute, the total number of real estate agents working online and the number of single-store agents in the country have both declined month-on-month, and have been declining for three consecutive months, indicating that the number of practitioners is still in a state of outflow.

According to the 2022 data compiled by the Shenzhen Real Estate Agents Association, the number of "senior" brokers among star personnel (real-name practitioners) has increased, and the loss of "newcomers" has been serious. The proportion of people who have been in the industry for 4 years or more was 65.6%, an increase of 13.5 percentage points year-on-year, and the number of people with 1-3 years accounted for 27.3% of the total, a year-on-year decrease of 9.9%, which reflects from the side that "newcomers" are more likely to change careers, and it is more difficult for old intermediaries with longer years of experience to leave.

In the face of the loss of customers and brokers, the industry and practitioners who are still persisting have begun to strive for change and seek "self-help" in the headwind.

As a leader in the industry, Lianjia, I love my home and Maitian have released signals to accelerate transformation and upgrading and improve service quality this year, emphasizing strengthening investment in broker training at the human level, establishing long-term firm trust between brokers and customers, and transferring from the past increment to the quality improvement stage.

The data provided by 58.com and Anjuke also shows that 94.6% of brokers will improve themselves through learning Xi every day to better serve customers, and one-third of them spend more than 1 hour learning Xi.

Ma Yecheng used to be a "die-hard fan" of Luo Ji Siwei, and now he is also a loyal user, with more than 1,000 e-books on his e-bookshelf, such as "Existential Psychotherapy", "1000 Iron Fans: The Underlying Logic of Building a Personal Brand", "Alive" and so on. According to the APP homepage, he learned Xi for 64 minutes on the day we met, and has persisted for 1048 days.

"Not only so many days, but there was a break of one day in the middle, and the first thousands of days were not counted. He added.

Talking about the current situation and the future, he plans to do self-media and pick up the video accounts he opened before to increase customer acquisition channels. "Now is an Internet era, the Internet is a big leverage, in this world you want to get profits, you have to be leveraged. ”

Note: Cao Anhua, Ma Yecheng, Zeng Ping, Xiaowei, Sun Qian, and Cao Lili are pseudonyms.

Editor-in-charge | To be sure