BEING a real estate agent is so easy especially here in the United States. All you need to do is enroll in a one-semester course and you can be accredited by the National Association of Realtors. Or you can pursue a bachelor’s or even a master’s degree in realty from some accredited college. You can choose either to become just a real estate salesperson of a real estate company or you can upgrade yourself and become a real estate broker.

A real estate broker must be the go-between of the buyer and seller. He or she must assess first a certain seller’s property before he or she is ready to advertise it to the buyer. The real estate broker must also know the actual value of the property and whether it is infested by ants or on the verge of collapsing. With that, he or she must inspect the property itself and know the condition of the floor, its carpets, etc. He or she must inquire from the owner whether the property for sale includes all the old furnishings in it such as the electric stove or the dishwasher.

On the other hand, the real estate broker must also be responsible to go around with the potential buyer in shopping around for a piece of property. He or she must explicitly know from the potential buyer what price range of property he’d like to buy. He or she must also know whether the owner intends to live in that property or merely treats it as a retreat home to go to during summer vacations and other special or contingent occasions. In other cases, the potential buyer would like to lease his property to other persons. For that, it is the responsibility of the real estate broker to enumerate to the potential buyer all the real estate laws in the area where the buyer intends to purchase property. These included federal, state and recurring laws such as the garbage collection tax law. There’s also the income tax law of the said property. And above all, the real estate broker must warn the potential buyer of the property of possible debt in connection with the property up for sale.

Professional real estate brokers – meaning, those who are accredited and have achieved a bachelor’s degree – do comparative market analysis, exposure, facilitating a sale, property management and auctioning property. The real estate brokers must also be the ones responsible to set up advertisements for the properties for sale. Some real estate brokers have even resorted to the Internet in advertising property. That’s why sales of real properties have jacked up and buyers of properties in a particular area are not limited to the same state. There are even foreign buyers as well depending on the real estate laws of that state. The National Association of Realtors has likewise formed an agreement with other countries in the world that the realtors of the other countries will cooperate with the NAR in their business. Isn’t that great?