Becoming a Licensed Real Estate Agent in Ontario

Sameer Amini: So in this webinar, I'm going to share many, many amazing information for you out of this seminar. By the end of it, you're going to know exactly if this is the right career for you, what does it take in this career, what are some of the fears that you may have? We're gonna speak to that as well. Uh, but let me start off with a bit of an introduction. My name is Samir Amini. I've been in the business now for 12 years. I have been in many, many roles. I've been a real estate sales representative, been doing buying and selling homes.

Sameer Amini: Then I got into a lot of management roles. I've started running the brokerages in the companies that you know you would work for, for example, and get paid your commissions. Uh, I have been part of the, the education side, uh, with real estate for about five to six years. I've worked with thousands of learners. I have worked with hundreds of top producer agents and realtors, and, uh, specifically in the city of Toronto and Ontario. So I bring a lot of wealth, uh, of knowledge in terms of real estate, and I can't wait to share many stories if I can today, wherever possible.

Sameer Amini: So, that's a little bit of introduction about me. So tonight we're gonna walk through exactly what a career in real estate looks like. Literally from start to finish, not just how to get your education done, but how to succeed and I promise to keep this real, the opportunities, the challenges, and the lifestyle. Most importantly, what does the roadmap look like? My goal is that by the end of the session, you'll know whether this exciting career path, again, is right for you, and how Career College Group can help you confidently take that first step. So now as we dive in, imagine the version of you who controls your income, your schedule, and your future, because that's what real estate truly offers.

Sameer Amini: Let's move on to this question of what is a real estate agent? Let me start off with an analogy. This, this is going to really help. Imagine you are standing on a dock, you're looking at an ocean. It's vast, it's unknown. Sometimes this ocean is calm, sometimes it is stormy. Now imagine there's a ship on the water. That ship represents your client's life savings, their family hopes, and their biggest decision. Now, when they hire you specifically, and the question says, what is a real estate agent? So when they hire a real estate agent, they're essentially hiring a captain, someone who knows exactly how to navigate the uncertainty, avoid dangerous waters, and guide them confidently to the destination they need to get to.

Sameer Amini: So tonight I'm gonna walk you through how you become that leader, how you become that captain, and we'll explore the mindset, the skills and the licensing steps, the earning potential, the lifestyle, and the truths. They're both exciting and challenging about this business. Now, if you're ready to take control of your future, again, I can't wait to begin and start answering a lot of your questions at the end of the session as well. Okay? So at the end, we're gonna do a lot of Q&A. So, most people think what is a real estate agent? Most people think, well, we Sell homes. We open doors to people, but houses, remember, don't buy themselves.

Sameer Amini: What we actually deal with are people at major life milestones, okay? So buying your first home, A lot of people, uh, have their first baby. Their families are increasing. A lot of individuals, their families are leaving the house. So they're downsizing. Someone is handling a loss. Their parents pass away. So the house they need to sell. Some people do their first home investment. Each moment that I just described in each scenario carries a lot of emotion, carries fear, anxiety, anticipation. So what is real estate agent? Well, again, we are people who guide these clients through that emotional storm. We don't just move people into new homes.

Sameer Amini: We move them literally in new chapters of their lives. A good realtor listens. We empathize and we educate. There's so many times where I've had to learn myself that if, when I'm in front of a client I need to listen twice and, and you know, they say you have two years one mouth, right? You need to listen twice. You need to understand exactly what they need and what they want. Once you have that understanding, you can truly then see where and how you can help. So a great realtor protects and empowers their client. Now, again, clients, when they call you, when they work with you and with real estate agents, they are relying again on your leadership.

Sameer Amini: You are the one leading them through a stressful journey they're trying to downsize, which means they have to sell the current home. They have, they have to buy what they need to next. How, what does the timing look like? When should we do this? Well, maybe the mark. How's the market now? Well, how will it be in three months from now? So all of this navigation is what a real estate agent is going to do. So your honesty, your market, understanding your confidence, they hire us not because everything is simple. They hire us because everything for them isn't. So what does a real estate agent do?

Sameer Amini: Again, as mentioned, the analogy I'm using is to really help you understand the idea. So you're again, the captain in action. Let's go deeper into the ship analogy. I've been using the analogy, so let's just keep going with it. You see, every day when you are in this business, you are literally studying the market, making sure when is the right time to list what is going on with prices. You are, as a captain of the ship, you're gonna be reading the weather. So you're anticipating bidding wars, rate changes, inflation, the economic factors, what drives consumer confidence. So why would people stop purchasing homes?

Sameer Amini: When could they start purchasing homes? So you're, you're anticipating all this just like a captain. You're guiding your crew, okay? You're explaining next steps, paperwork. You're going through offers, you're going through clauses. There's going to a bit of, uh, legal stuff that you need to understand. You're trying to avoid storms. So you're negotiating in the middle of deals, you are making sure there are third parties coming in, checking on the house, inspecting the house. There's no surprises. You're making sure there's no fraud happening at the same time. Okay? As a captain, you're also ensuring this smooth landing, making sure that when they purchase this home, or when they sell this home, we call it closing date.

Sameer Amini: That's the date where keys get exchanged and monies get exchanged. So we want to make sure that date everything goes smoothly. Okay? So we host showings, and yes, we put up signs, but remember, we also do so much more behind the scenes. You're conducting market analysis, you are managing legal documents. You are coordinating with third party lenders, with lawyers, inspectors that are part of this deal, and you are literally the middle person holding everybody together, okay? You're protecting your client against risks, things that they need to watch out for. So what we ultimately do in our careers, we are a safety net.

Sameer Amini: A safety net in ways in places where the client doesn't even know, okay? So when you deliver for a family who thought their dream home might fall apart, okay, that feeling is priceless. The feeling of when you sit down from the first conversation to, Hey, listen, we've, we've saved for 10 years. We've saved money. We are ready to purchase our first dream home. This is what we dream to have from that conversation

Sameer Amini: to three months, to actually seeing them in that house and being welcome to their, uh, you know, housewarming party. That feeling is truly, truly priceless. So, everything I just said is examples and things that you are going to be involved in when you're in this business. Uh, why a career in real estate? So let me go and change the slide. There we go. When you are running a real estate career, you're ultimately running a business that that's what you're doing. You're opening up a business, uh, you're not joining a company as an employee, you're not getting paid hourly. So you are opening a business from the start.

Sameer Amini: What does that mean? That means if you're opening your own business, you have total freedom. So this career, once you start, it doesn't trap you in a nine to five day that you have to be in these hours, and then you get to go home. Okay? You design your week, you're in full control of your hours and your scheduling. You choose your clients. You choose who you wanna work with and who you don't wanna work with. You're running your own business. So you have that freedom to not work on the weekends or work on the weekends or get your tasks done late night or early morning.

Sameer Amini: That freedom and that flexibility is extremely important for many that get into this business. Number two, you have unlimited income. There is no limit to how much you can earn in this career. And I have seen this firsthand myself, including when I, I never forget before I started real estate, I started 12 years ago. So before real estate, I would work pretty much full-time in a restaurant. Uh, numerically speaking, I would make in that entire year what I would make in one paycheck of one deal in real estate. So that's, that was a huge, huge eye-opener for me. I have seen people climb in this business making 50 KA year to making a million dollars plus a year in this business.

Sameer Amini: Your success is in cap by a salary. It is not capped by an hourly, hourly rate. You get paid for the value and the effort that you put in. One of the, uh, most amazing things about real estate career is that truly the amount of hustle you put in, the amount of effort you put in, you get rewarded five times, 10 times, uh, in, in the effort that you put into it. For example, lemme give you an example. One of, uh, the realtors in my team, uh, she goes out five days a week. I'm not kidding. She goes out from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM All she does is she goes into the neighborhood that knows her, uh, neighborhood of about 10,000 homes every single day.

Sameer Amini: She goes and just door knocks and talks to the owners, creates relationships, figures out what their problems are in real estate, how she can help them in their real estate journeys. Are they thinking of selling this year? Are they trying to move to a new neighborhood? Downsizing, upsizing, she's trying to figure them out. And she, I can tell you with conference right now, I think last week she brought up three new properties on the market. Uh, she sold about four last month. So all she, again, she puts the effort she's putting in the time, but the reward and the amount of income that she makes, it's, it's, again, it's about five to 10 times more than the effort that you're putting in.

Sameer Amini: It's extremely rewarding. Number three, there's pride in ownership. So you're building your own business with your name on it, your picture, your marketing people know you as in the area, for example, okay? You are the brand. You are the CEO of that business. Number four, uh, you have meaningful work. You get to say that I helped this family and get it into their first home. You get to say that I helped this investor build their wealth. They have now multiple properties and each property they bought, you got them an amazing deal on every single one, okay? You changed somebody's future, literally. Okay?

Sameer Amini: Are there easier jobs? Yes. Are there jobs with more upside, more dignity and possibility? Very, very few. So, real estate is just one of those careers that, again, the feeling of completing a successful transaction, seeing that client get what they've wanted or that investor, uh, it's extremely rewarding.

Sameer Amini: So one successful deal will keep you motivated for the next five years like that. That's how amazing of a feeling that is. So let's kind of talk about the, uh, education side of it. So the, there's an education path and what are the exams in Ontario? You must complete the RICO approved pre-registration courses. Now, how many courses are there? There are about five courses, and you have to do two simulation sessions. In total, you have about six exams to pass and go over. Now, I want you to keep this number in mind for now, 'cause I will bring it up at the end.

Sameer Amini: Okay? So that means in total for the courses, uh, it's gonna cost you around $4,200 around that number, okay? Plus, once you finish your courses and you join the business, you do need some memberships, and those memberships are gonna be extra. You must at the very least, have a high school diploma. And if you don't, there's a small test we make you go through and you must meet some of the English requirements and some of the basic requirements in, in that test. If you don't have the high school diploma, now, career college group is one of the approved education providers, okay?

Sameer Amini: Now, for this career, you don't need any previous real estate experience. You don't have to climb a corporate ladder. This is pure entrepreneurship, okay? Now, when it comes to the entire education system, I wanna point out something that every single person in this business that has started or is in the business now, or is about to start, has gone through the same exact path. Every single person started with the courses, finished the courses, and then they all started their business from zero. There are people that make, as I mentioned, million dollars plus a year. There's people who make 50, a hundred thousand dollars plus, but they all started from the same footing of getting their education done.

Sameer Amini: Now, let's talk a little bit about us. How can we help you in this journey? Okay, so now at CCG, um, you're not just enrolling again in a real estate course. You're joining a guided pathway, uh, into the profession. What makes us stand out, uh, is our instructor led group option that starts right from course one. So instead of feeling like you're on your own, you get to start course one. And with CCG, you're going to learn in a live weekly class with real instructors, someone like myself that is also, by the way, active in the business currently. Uh, you were gonna be part of a supportive group.

Sameer Amini: You're gonna be in the same group and progressing through this journey together.

Sameer Amini: So you're not gonna feel alone. There's going to be a preparation. I'm going to share stories as you read about the topic, I get to tie it into the real world scenario and give you some stories, uh, to, to give it more life and see how that topic plays in the real world. There's going to be accountability. So we put you kind of in a bit of a schedule, so you'll know that if you are part of this group, this group is starting, let's say in November or August, and we usually finish around 40 weeks, okay? So if you join the group session and about less than 40 weeks, you can be done everything.

Sameer Amini: If you follow our scheduling with it, which means you're joining those weekly sessions and we have given certain weeks where you get to do the exam, and then you get to continue the next. So we, we kind of pre-schedule everything for you, and you just get to follow that way, you know, you're part of a group, you're gonna be accountable to be part of it and continue and progress through with us. And that same, uh, instructor will be with you till the end. Okay? Now, because everything is online, you should have the flexibility to kind of balance your work family.

Sameer Amini: And what we've done is if you join those group sessions and you don't do it on your own, 'cause you can do it on your own with us, and you don't have to be part of those group sessions, but if you choose to be part of it, those group sessions are let's say from six to eight weekdays or from seven to nine on a Monday or a Wednesday, or it can be on a weekend. So on a weekend for example, we would have a Saturday, 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM These would be some of the sessions you could be part of, and you get to choose if you wanna be part of the weeknights or if you wanna be part of the weekend mornings.

Sameer Amini: So that flexibility, again, is to help balance your work and family. Now, CCG, with us, again, we give you education and we give you a community. Again, back to that analogy, that crew, the captain, the navigation tools at all of this with cz is going to help launch you again into this career with confidence. I remember when I started, when I did my courses, there was no group session, unfortunately, that I could be a part of at that time. So I was reading pretty much everything on my own, all the content. I would try my best to keep up with it, to force myself to say, okay, I know this chapter is long, but let's, let's get through it, right?

Sameer Amini: I, I would have to self-discipline myself a lot. Um, but in these group sessions, it becomes extremely easy to continue and progress through all of it.

Sameer Amini: Now, what do you, what, what do expect once you are a real estate agent? So let's say you have now gone through the six exams, it's been 40 weeks. You have also now given in about $4,200 into this. Now what happens? Now, you, you're a real estate agent. The truth about your first year, the moment you start, you become a business owner, a brand, a negotiator, a marketer, a leader, okay? This year is all about building trust before you build your commission. Now, let me give you an example. Many people that start, many people that start, if you are about, let's say with the membership fees, you're about six or $7,000 in already.

Sameer Amini: If you think about it, if you open up any business, as an example, in the city of Toronto, the cost of opening a business is a lot more than seven or $6,000 a lot more. And the success rate is also extremely scary. Now, in real estate, it's not that bad because you're starting off with fees of around six to 7,000 to start. Now, assuming you have a car, assuming you have a phone and a laptop, as long as these assumptions are there, imagine that in your entire first year of real estate, all you do is you sell or you buy just one property in the entire year.

Sameer Amini: Let's just do the math very quickly. The average price point, let's say an average home in Toronto is about $1.2 million. If you, or let's just say $1 million, usually when you do a deal, the commission is usually around two to 2.5%. Let's assume it's two point a percent on a deal. That one deal that you did the entire year, that paycheck for you will be about $25,000. Let's say we minus some fees from the brokerage, et cetera. You're left with $22,000, $22,000 for the entire year. That's gonna pay off for your fees. That's gonna pay off for all the costs, and you're still gonna have money left in your pocket.

Sameer Amini: So if you have this fear, and a lot of people have the fear that, okay, well if I start, I'm gonna fail, or I'm, I'm afraid of failing, or I'm, I'm going to number one to put that at ease, even if you do just one deal the entire year, you're gonna make your fees back plus a lot more in your pocket. And second, put away that fear immediately, otherwise, it's gonna manifest itself and it's gonna become true on its own. So, um, listen to how, again, easy this business, and I'm gonna talk about what it takes. So let's talk about what does it take when you be begin?

Sameer Amini: How do you stay successful? Everybody asking me this question, Samir, what is the secret to real estate? How do you stay successful? How do you, how do you win? It's so simple. You're going into a business

Sameer Amini: that you're dealing with people. As long as you have good social skills, you can, you're, you can, you're comfortable with unfamiliar faces, you can easily start a conversation and you can easily start to, to build a connection with somebody. That's the secret of success in this business. That's it. I would say that is the biggest skillset. If you have that, you can go very, very far in this business. People in real estate, especially when they're making such a big decision of dealing with their entire life, saving and banking on your advice for that, it's a huge, huge trust, uh, relationship that's required.

Sameer Amini: So if you're someone that can build that trust based on your professional advice, they are now making decisions. It's, it's literally like going to a doctor. The doctor diagnoses you. The doctor at the end gives you the options of, well, you have two options. They tell you the benefits, they tell you the risks of both options, and you finally at the end get to choose. But they always give you their advice, okay? And a patient always relies on that advice. Similarly, as a real estate agent, people are coming to you with heavy questions. This is their lifesaving they're dealing with.

Sameer Amini: So trust and being honest, these two traits is the first thing everyone looks for when they deal with a real estate agent. Okay? Now, there's a lot more to winning. There's, because you're running a business now, you need business skills, for example, being consistent with what you need to get done, okay? You wanna learn every single day. You want to invest time into training. Your first year when you join a brokerage, you're going to be training for about two months. The brokerage is going to give you a lot of practical training, so you'll know what to do. You've learned about the theory in the courses, now you're gonna learn about the practical ability of it.

Sameer Amini: You'll know how to click and where to click, okay? Now you have to learn, you're running a business. What are your expenses? Where are your incomes? Where can you go? So a lot of those skill sets of just knowing, okay, being consistent, I have to, these, these are my tasks for today. These skill sets, again, are going to make you win. Now, these are the, some of the traits that a lot of people, it, it, this is, these are the negative traits. If you're someone that you're gonna wait for business, that it's gonna come to you instead of creating it, that's a negative.

Sameer Amini: If you fear rejection more than you want success, that's a negative trait. Um, if you expect fast money without fast action, again, negative, okay? If you're someone that doesn't like to have hard conversations, that's a negative In this career, uh, if you're someone that care more about appearing successful than becoming successful, that's another negative. So, success in this field, honestly, is it's not about being flashy, it's about being consistent day after day. For example, I just told you one of our realtors, the same, uh, woman that I was telling you about, she door knocks five days a week consistently today outside, it's, it's like almost a snowstorm.

Sameer Amini: And I just called her and she is out there just door

Sameer Amini: knocking and speaking to people. Okay? So great realtors, again, aren't born, they're built through action, through consistency. Let me take in some questions. So unfortunately, speaking of funding, so I think we have the question from, let just double check, uh, Hulu Waku, I apologize if I'm mispronouncing that name. So in terms of getting funding or scholarship, unfortunately, because this, this is not under an OSAP education program, you can't really get funding or scholarship for this. Unfortunately, at this time, this, this would be something that you would have to pay as you go, kind of, it's not a semester, you're not joining a semester, you are paying for course one, completing it, passing it, and then whenever you have the funds for course two, you pay and start course two.

Sameer Amini: Now, you have to note when you start course one, you have two years to finish the entire curriculum. If within the two years you don't finish, unfortunately the cycle resets and you have to start from course one. So keep that in mind. Okay, I hope that answers the question, Kelly, is next. If someone has completed the education and exam in the USA and has moved to Canada, is there anything that can be Yes. So Kelly, I highly recommend you call RECO directly. So go ahead on Google and type RECO RECO, and they're gonna, you're gonna get a phone number, give them a call, and they're going to tell you what can be transferred or if they may make you do a specific exam, and then you should be done.

Sameer Amini: So speak to them directly. They're gonna guide you better on what's required. This business, by the way, has a lot of branches. You can get into pre-construction condos, you can focus just on condo apartments. You can focus on commercial. And commercial has many branches. For example, you could spend 10 years of your real estate career just buying and selling restaurants. And that could be a specialty. You could be someone that specializes in just residential and just detached townhouses and semis. You can have these niche branches in real estate where again, you can have a long and successful career. I'll give you an example. One of our agents, uh, I think last month they came up to me and they said they have a client who wants to sell their farm.

Sameer Amini: They have a farm they want to sell. Now, the issue is that nobody in the office has sold a farm, okay? None of us really know what it would take to sell a farm. So that's where we would do, is we would get someone, find someone in the real estate that has the expertise or their niche practice and focus is buying and selling farms. And we would elaborate with them. We would either share commission with them, but we would also share that client together. So the person who knows what they're doing, they're kind of taking the leadership on all the advice on the steps, explaining documents, and the entire guidance, we would be sitting on the back burner just kind of watching and learning.

Sameer Amini: Okay? So now imagine you're the person that focuses in farms. You're gonna get many other realtors coming to you, giving you their clients because you know what you're doing, and that's the field they need help with. So I've seen people that they've spent 20 years, and all they do is they rent out offices in large office buildings in downtown, and that's all they do. They've never sold a home before. They've never sold a home. All they've done is 20 years of renting out offices. So, you know, by the way, just to, uh, expand on this, when you sell someone's home or you buy it for someone, it's a lot of emotions that's involved because that's their life saving.

Sameer Amini: And, uh, for example, if, if you walk into a showing, they say, you know what? This house does not smell the way I like it. And they'll walk away or they'll say, you know what? This house I'm walking in, there's this energy, I, I, I just, you know what? I don't, I don't like this house. There's something about it. So you get a lot of responses that you can't quantify. It just doesn't make sense sometimes. But in commercial, it's different. In commercial, it's all about just pure logic and pure numbers. Does this give me enough money? Is there enough return on my investment? Yes, it is. Great.

Sameer Amini: I'm buying it. Here's the money. So depending on, again, how you are and what you prefer, you can get to choose in this career, which kind of clientele you get to work with as well. So that's again, another bonus. If you've been thinking about starting in this career, you wanna, you've always thought about getting into it. You wanna, you, again, I've, I hope tonight I have given you enough information so you understand cost-wise, you understand skill wise, and you understand what's involved. What are you getting into? It is a business that you are gonna put more hours in

Sameer Amini: because sometimes clients will be free after 7:00 PM sometimes clients are only free on the weekends. So you do have to run around the schedule of your clients. So again, that's, that's another thing to keep in mind. Now with CCG, I'm a lead facilitator with CCG. I think CCG is doing an amazing job with delivering the education, especially with their group supports that come with the fee. So if you wanna start, you can visit career college.com/realestate. You can sign up and our team, they are incredible. They are fast, quick, responsive, um, they'll answer any questions that you have and they'll start you on your journey.

Sameer Amini: Thank you so much for joining the webinar. It's been great. And, uh, we, we really hope to see you in the program. Have a great night. Thank you so much.