Real estate broker quits job, opens iced tea shop and sells street food

The time of ironing clothes is over.

No longer the image of a real estate agent always wearing a white shirt, trousers, and holding a file, Nguyen Van Hung (a real estate agent) is serving iced tea to customers at a sidewalk stall. Working in the tourism industry, affected by the pandemic, losing his job, Hung switched to being a real estate broker. Hung was trained for 1 month, then went to Hoang Mai district to work.

Hung's group consists of more than 10 people in charge of selling villas at the project. Every day, Hung is there until evening to hand out flyers to passersby. After a while, calling customers and taking them to visit the project, Hung's group has not yet closed any villas. Bored with the job, many members of the group quit. Hung was the fourth person to quit after not being enthusiastic enough to stick with it. "Without connections, it's hard to sell a villa worth tens of billions of dong," Hung said.

After staying at home for a while, Hung found a job in an apartment building, selling iced tea on the sidewalk. Although the work was hard, Hung had a steady income without much expense. Occasionally, Hung still met his old broker colleagues over tea and chatted.

Real estate broker working at tea shop

Hung said that the rate of real estate brokers quitting the profession is very high. This is a profession that both the inside and the outside are bored with. Looking at the commission, everyone thinks it is a lot of money, but in reality, not many people can survive with this profession. Currently, many of Hung's broker friends have switched to driving Grab, delivering goods, or selling food on the sidewalk.

Nguyen Thi Thanh (from Ha Nam) used to be a real estate broker while selling grilled meat skewers on the sidewalk in My Dinh. After giving birth, Thanh applied for a job as a real estate consultant at an apartment project in Cau Giay. At first, the job was quite hard because Thanh did not have many connections. After working for a while, Thanh began to feel discouraged because the salary was quite low, the main source of income was sales commission. "It looks glamorous from the outside, but in reality, brokers go to work hungry," Thanh said.

Under pressure to make ends meet, Thanh decided to quit her job and go home to make grilled food to sell on the sidewalk. Thanh said that although selling food is hard work, it brings in a stable income. Thanh also has millions of dong each day to take care of her family and young children.

Brokers on the sidewalk looking for customers

Constantly changing

Evaluating the brokerage team, Mr. Tran Duc Dien, Chairman of the Board of Directors of MaxLand, said that joining the profession seems easy, however, due to lack of knowledge, lack of skills, and even lack of brokerage mindset, the personnel in the profession fluctuates continuously.

There are always new people entering the profession, and there are also many people who have to leave the profession, there are always personnel moving from one unit to another, from one project to another. The real estate brokerage industry is very thirsty for personnel when every floor is recruiting a huge number.

Mr. Le Hoang Chau - Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association stated that in reality, there are more than 300,000 brokers, but only 10% of brokers have a practice certificate and have been trained with about 2,000 brokerage offices and trading floors, so most brokers are operating freely as "land brokers and house brokers". There are not many trading floors of reputable real estate businesses.

Many real estate offices closed

According to Mr. Chau, due to the lack of professional brokers with practice certificates and broker codes, in recent times, "speculators, real estate brokers, dishonest businesses" have caused price inflation, price hikes, virtual transactions, creating artificial scarcity, causing virtual fevers in land and housing prices on the market. In fact, real estate trading floors have been operating very sluggishly in recent years and many trading floors have closed or temporarily suspended operations.

Mr. Nguyen Cong Chinh, Director of Technology of Dat Xanh Mien Bac Real Estate, said that the real estate brokerage profession has shifted a lot, especially during the Covid-19 period, with personnel from other industries moving to become brokers. Mr. Chinh pointed out that in reality, brokers still account for a large number due to the nature of the industry, which is constantly changing in personnel and is difficult to digitally transform.

“Since 2017, the company has started to use technology to manage transactions and customers - training employees to perform transaction processes on the software. But before the training is completed, the employees have quit. New employees have to be trained again from the beginning. Some employees can only sell a house in 1-2 months, only then using the software. When they are first trained, they can operate proficiently, but when they practice, they forget everything,” said Mr. Chinh.

According to statistics from a real estate business unit, 80% of brokerage staff will choose another company after only one year of working. The real estate market is in a period of stagnation, according to experts, the brokerage force will have a fierce elimination in the near future.

According to Vietnamnet