Sales & business development · Leading & Selling

Real estate salesperson: what the job actually is

Finding people who are about to move, earning their trust, and being paid only when a deal actually closes.

Published October 1, 2026Last reviewed October 1, 2026How we research and correct this

The work

What this job actually is

A commission business with no salary. You are self-employed in practice, registered with a brokerage, and nothing is earned until a transaction closes — which can be months after the work.
Most of the week is finding people, not showing houses. Calls, follow-up, open houses, staying in touch with people who will move in two years.
Managing the most stressful financial decision of somebody's life while being honest with them about things they do not want to hear.
Nights and weekends, because that is when people look at houses. Your schedule belongs to your clients far more than most jobs.
Running a small business: your own marketing, your own expenses, your own tax, your own insurance, and a quiet month that is entirely your problem.

A Tuesday

What a normal day looks like

Not a good day or a bad one. The ordinary version, which is what you would actually be living.

7:30 — New listings, market changes, anything affecting a client. Fifteen minutes before anybody is awake.
8:00 — Follow-up calls. The unglamorous engine of the whole business, and the part most new agents stop doing in month four.
9:30 — Preparing a listing: photos booked, measurements, the conversation about price where you tell somebody their house is worth less than they think.
11:00 — Paperwork. Real estate is a documents business and a mistake in them is expensive.
12:00 — Lunch with a mortgage broker or a lawyer. Half the business comes from the people around the business.
13:30 — Showings. Three houses, one buyer, and more listening than talking.
15:30 — An offer comes in, low. Present it properly, advise honestly, do not let your own commission decide what you say.
17:00 — Negotiation by phone, a bit at a time, over several hours.
19:30 — Evening showings, because that is when people are free.
21:00 — Deal falls apart over a financing condition. Nobody gets paid. This happens and it is the job.

Honestly

Who loves this, and who should not do it

The second list is the useful one. Nearly every careers page leaves it out, which is why nearly every careers page reads like an advert.

How you actually get there in Ontario

You must be 18, so plan the gap
The minimum age to apply is 18, along with an Ontario secondary school diploma or equivalent and the legal right to work in Canada. If you are set on this at 16, the useful years before you qualify are spent learning to sell something else.
The pre-registration phase
RECO's Real Estate Salesperson Program: five courses, two simulation sessions and six exams, completed sequentially, with a maximum of 24 months to finish the pre-registration phase.
Find a brokerage — this is the real gate
You cannot trade in real estate unless you are registered and employed by a real estate brokerage. Choosing the brokerage matters more than new agents realise: training, mentoring, desk fees and commission split vary enormously.
Register, insure, and then keep studying
A criminal record and judicial matters check, application to RECO and mandatory insurance. Then a post-registration phase before your first renewal, and continuing education for as long as you hold the registration.

Where this comes from: RECO — becoming a real estate agent in Ontario · Job Bank — Real estate agents and salespersons (NOC 63101)

The money

What it pays in Ontario

Job Bank's own figures, quoted rather than summarised, with the period they describe — so you can tell how old they are and go and check them.

$37,561: Low (a year)
$62,400: Median (a year)
$206,000: High (a year)

Ontario, NOC 63101. Reference period 2021, last updated by Job Bank on 19 November 2025. Wages vary a lot by region inside Ontario and by how long you have been doing it — the low figure is roughly where you start, not what the job is worth. Job Bank reports this one by the year rather than by the hour, because the income is commission and the hours behind it are nothing like fixed.

Source: Job Bank — Real estate salesperson wages in Ontario

Before you leave school

Things you can do now

Sell something. Anything, to strangers, repeatedly. This is the only part of this career you can practise before 18 and it is the part that decides it.
Get comfortable on the phone. An entire generation finds calling people difficult, which is precisely why it is an advantage.
Learn how a mortgage works, what a deposit is, and what closing costs are. Most adults do not know, and you can know at 17.
Go to open houses and watch what the agent does and does not do. It is free and it is a masterclass in both directions.

Test it

Do this before you decide anything

Reading about a job tells you almost nothing. This is designed to be done alone, this week, for free.

Find out whether you can prospect, because that is the job

About 120 minutes

Pick something real you could sell or organise this week — a service, an item, tickets, a job you could do for somebody.
Make a list of twenty people who might say yes. Actual names, not a category.
Contact all twenty, individually, not as a group message. Write down each answer.
Follow up with everybody who did not reply, once, two days later. Notice exactly how that second contact feels.

What it tells you. The follow-up is the experiment. Almost everybody can do the first twenty; the career belongs to people who can do the second contact without feeling like a nuisance, every week, for years. If that felt impossible, sales is not the right room — and that is worth finding out for the cost of an afternoon rather than a 24-month programme.

Better than any article

Questions for somebody who does this job

Most people say yes to a teenager who asks good questions. These are the ones that get real answers rather than encouragement.

“What did you earn in your first year, honestly?”
“Where do your clients actually come from?”
“How many hours a week are you working, including evenings?”
“What does a quiet market do to you?”
“How do you choose a brokerage?”
“What makes somebody quit in the first two years?”
“When has being honest cost you a deal, and what happened?”

Could you own one of these?

The part other career sites never mention

You effectively are one from day one — you are registered through a brokerage but you run your own book, your own marketing and your own expenses. Some agents go further and build teams, or become brokers and open their own brokerage, which is a genuinely different business with staff and overheads.

Business 101 is free and teaches that part

Not sure this is the right list to be reading

Start from yourself, not from the job.

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