Real Estate Finance Final Exam: Fill & Download for Free

The conversation is always the same, but the scene may be different.I’m at a bar, a golf course, or a dinner party, and somebody always tells me “I’m actually thinking about going into real estate!”They don’t know why, they don’t know how, and they have no clue what the job actually entails, but everybody wants to go into real estate.Getting your licence isn’t rocket science, but it isn’t filling out a form either…People often ask me, “Why did you go into real estate.”The God’s honest truth: I don’t have any idea.I went to McMaster University for Commerce, but I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. My friends all had their plans mapped out; by third year, one buddy was taking ten accounting courses so he could go into accounting. Another buddy was taking ten finance courses. I took a couple finance, one accounting course, a couple courses in sales and marketing, economics, and of course: popular music. I wanted to learn whereas most students just want to either get high marks—in any course possible, or take the courses necessary for a certain career. Nope, not me. I wanted to get exposure to everything.Of course, when I graduated, my buddies all had jobs already lined up, while I had my birdie putt lined up on the 17th green at Don Valley Golf Club. It was on the golf course that a friend of mine said to me: “You should go into real estate.”And the rest, is history.The first step for any aspiring Realtor should be to go and talk to somebody in the industry—an agent, manager, broker, etc. Most people don’t do this, they just jump online and go to www.orea.com to sign up.There is a curriculum that all potential Realtors must follow, and while it’s far from the likes of the three phases of the C.F.A., it is tedioius and time consuming. At the risk of the Toronto Real Estate Board revoking my license, I will say that it is a complete and utter cash grab. Well, it does weed out some of the people that shouldn’t be in the business, but many more make it through the filter.The most frustrating part about getting licensed, other than the money, is the time. It took me eight months to jump through the hoops, and I fast-tracked as much as possible. I scheduled my exam the day after I registered for the courses, I took classes and wrote exams in other cities across Ontario to speed up the process, and in the end I shaved about four months off the process. But the question most people don’t ask themselves: What am I going to do in that 8-12 months?For a friend of a friend of mine, who is currently doing his license, the answer is “sleep in until noon, smoke pot all day until it’s time for my nap, and then talk about how I can’t wait to get into real estate.” Yeah. He’ll be a HUGE success in this business! For me, I decided to get a job(s) that would help me in the industry. I worked at TD Bank as a teller so that I would meet people in the neighborhood and people would get to know me. I hated every second of that job….”Have a great day, Mr. Johnson, and thanks for banking with TD!” I hate being told what to do, and more importantly I hate being forced to be nice to people. I like real estate because I’m my own boss, and I get to choose when I work, how I work, and who I work with. If I don’t like somebody, I can kick them in the butt (metaphorically or literally), but that didn’t fly at the bank.I also had a second job as an apprentice for one of the most successful men I know, who at the time was building his own house. This man, who made his money through his marketing company, online poker companies, building houses on the side, and anything else he can think of, taught me the foundation of the housing industry. At the time, he was building a house in an upscale Toronto neighborhood, and I saw the process from the ground up.I recall one day when he had me and my friend Chris run wheel-barrows full of cement into the backyard to pour his back patio. He stood there, shouting, timing us (like in movies when the bank robbers have one person stand there yelling “Twenty seconds……thirty seconds, and they always get away on time), and making us move as fast as possible. When the patio had been finished—the foundations and the slab itself, he had paid us $12/hour for two days of work, spent $5000 for concrete mix, and paid a masonry $70/hour for a half day. He spent less than six grand on a patio that would cost him $30,000 if he paid a company to do it for him. In the end, I learned several new skills, and worked on anything from landscaping, to carpentry, to general labor. He even got me a few clients of my own that wanted me to work on their houses. It paid the bills, gave me “beer money,” and enabled me to not only pick the brains of some very successful people, but also contact them down the road once I had my real estate license.Doing your real estate license takes very little time, and without a job to keep you busy and pay your bills, I think you’d go stir crazy.The three phases of the Ontario Real Estate Association’s curriculum begin with “Phase 1: Real Estate as a Professional Career” which costs you $390, and runs for one month and then another month to prepare for the exam. If you take the course online, and you require the workbook, it’s an extra $50. If you fail the exam, and want to re-write, it’s another $50. If you fail ANY exam twice, you are forced to retake the course, and thus pay the huge fee all over again. Money, money, money…The first phase is like taking 7th grade all over again. Calculation the area of a square! OH NO! Simple math and elementary term-memorizing comprises the exam, which comes with a 60% failure rate for first time writers. A new agent in our office just told me she got 98% on her phase one test, to which I replied, “You mean you got a question wrong?” I have no clue how you fail this test, just no clue.“Phase 2” is more boring information about construction of houses from the ground up (interesting, perhaps to some) including sections on ground-fault-circuit-interrupters that all Realtors should know about….yeah. The cost is $420 for this educational gem, and takes two months for the course and then an exam after an additional month.Five months after you’ve started, and dished out over $800 to learn things that your kid brother is learning at the same time, you take Phase 3. This is where it actually gets useful. You make the choice as to whether you want to take Residential or Commercial, and you are forced to take at least half of the course in-class as opposed to correspondence or online. The cost is $620. The course runs for two months, then you write the final exam, which actually consists of material relevant to a Realtor’s job, ie. writing up offers, negotiating, code of ethics, etc. Pass this exam, and you can apply for your real estate license.But the fun doesn’t end there!Now you decide who to work for. When I was doing my Phase 2, I started interviewing companies. That’s right, not “interviewing with” but rather interviewing. In real estate, the Realtor is in demand. This isn’t like all other fields where you put together your resume, apply, go through interviews, and hope you get the job. In real estate, companies are alwayslooking for new agents. But like any other industry, there are both good companies and bad, and while anybody with a pulse can get a job with Homelife or one of the thousand Re/Max offices in Toronto, you aren’t guaranteed so much as a foot in the door with a good company. I interviewed Chestnut Park, Johnston & Daniel, Re/Max (I have no clue why, but I did), and of course Bosley Real Estate where I ended up. My decision was essentially made in advance, but I wanted to see what else was out there.Every company works differently with respect to fees, salaries, and expenses. Some companies offer a higher commission split, but charge you a “desk fee” which is a right to work there. A friend of a friend just started working for Re/Max. He has a 70/30 commission split, which is above average for a brand new agent, but he pays them a desk fee of $1200 per month! He also pays $1500 per year towards the Re/Max trademark as well as another $3500 per year in “marketing costs.” So before he has ever done a deal, he is in the hole for almost TWENTY GRAND!Nobody said starting in real estate is cheap!When I started, the first thing I did was pay for my license with the Toronto Real Estate Board, at a cost of $1700. That was partly for new agent registration, and partly for my dues in 2003. Then I paid my fees to the Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA) and to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) for who knows what. All told, I dished out over $3000 in associated fees.But the cash out-flows didn’t end there!Being a new agent, I had to get photos done (ahhh….yes…the swarthy real estate photo!) at a professional studio for about $200. I spent $200 on business cards, and then $500 on my Open House signs. I purchased a new Blackberry at a cost of $670, and sent out “Announcement Cards” to about 400 people at a cost of around $500 for postage and product. I spoiled myself with a new Dell laptop at a cost of about $1800, and got a website up and running at a cost of $40/month pre-paid for the year. My company required me to sign up for the long-term disability plan, at a cost of $30/month as well. I went to Business Depot and bought office supplies and computer software for about $300, and of course I blew over $2000 on new suits, shirts, ties, shoes, and other things to make me look as good as my mother tells me I already do. In my first six months, I spent over $8000 in advertising alone.My first day at Bosley Real Estate was quite memorable. I was told to come in for the 10:00AM meeting, so I did. I sat in the lobby for an hour, drinking cup after cup of coffee. I had never drank coffee before that in my life, yet I thought it was a good idea to drink six or seven cups that day. At about noon, somebody finally realized that the meeting was at 1:00PM, so I went for lunch. Yeah, I’d had a rough morning sitting in the lobby…..”Time for lunch!” At the afternoon meeting, I introduced myself, and this old lady agent remarked “Oh he’s soooo cute!” I really felt like an adult and a professional right then and there, as old ladies lined up to pinch my cheeks and tell me how I reminded them of their grandson…Four out of every five licensed real estate agents are out of the business within 18 months.It takes 3-5 years to “make the phone ring” and get a foothold in the industry.But people are lined up at the door of the Ontario Real Estate Association to enroll in the education program and obtain their license, and OREA churns out more and more agents every week! I actually wish the licensing program were made much harder (now that I have my license) because too many people who just aren’t qualified enough are making their way into the business.Source: http://torontorealtyblog.com/archives/419

I hate to admit this, but I’ve never gotten an A in highschool except one time for a class called GMRC, which stood for Good Manners and Right Conduct. And I never got better than a C in either science or math. I had zero interest in the subject matter and my teachers taught in the old fashioned rote method of memorizing, which didn’t help motivate me. I couldn’t care less about memorizing the multiplication tables. When I did division, I would have to draw sticks then use circles to divide by the number — until I couldn’t draw more than 100 sticks on a page.I graduated high school by the skin of my teeth. (I was failing physics. My final exam was a D, which is a fail at my school, and my teacher had me write an essay as to why she should pass me to gain enough credits to graduate.)Anyway, fast forward some 40-plus years later. Life has taught me lots of lessons that one would never learn in a classroom. I learned to be resilient, assertive, and tenacious among other things. As I matured, I developed an insatiable curious appetite for wanting to learn anything and everything I could get my hands on — particularly with computers and computing. Much as I sucked at math in high school, I got jobs involving numbers. First I was an actuarial assistant, then an accounting clerk, then an insurance broker for financial guaranties, then a risk manager, then a real estate finance director. All this I did without a college degree. I eventually went back to school to get my BA I wanted to change careers and become a full time writer, which was what I loved doing even back in high school. After graduation I started out as a reporter, then got a chance to work as a research writer for a University. But then shortly after that my role changed to market research and analytics, which is pretty much back to numbers. And that’s where I am today.Thanks to computers and calculators, I no longer have to draw sticks to make simple division. But if someone had told me back in high school that someday I would learn math and be very good at it, I would never have believed it.As an aside, I would mentioned that my son ran into the very same problem when he was in high school. He hated that his friends could pull numbers out of the air to solve math and he couldn’t. Today he’s in a computer science master’s program.Moral to this very long diatribe is to cut yourself some slack. Just do the best you can even if your best is just enough to get by. In time, you will find your groove and figure out what you’re really good at and excel at it. Furthermore, you’re going to love it.

Dear Friend,Let me tell you everything about NICMAR since you look a little worried. Assuming that you are a fresher with no work experience or with a work experience within 1 year ( work experience under 12 months is NOT considered in NICMAR).First of all,You are roughly going to invest 15 lakhs for 2 years. So, it is very important that you are absolutely ready to invest so much.NICMAR offers 5 programmes from PUNE CAMPUS as Post Graduation Programs.Note : NICMAR does NOT offer Graduation. It's a certification program. This is not a DEGREE.Advanced Construction ManagementProject Engineering and ManagementReal Estate and Urban Infrastructure ManagementInfrastructure Finance, Development and ManagementManagement of Family Owned Construction Business.The first four programs require a Bachelors degree in Engineering or Architecture. The fifth one needs you to own a construction firm.Advanced Construction Management in PUNE campus has a strength of 467 and is the most sought after course in NICMAR. As a result, most companies come for recruitment of ACM students. This course covers both Technical aspects and Management aspects. The technical sessions are stuffed with civil engineering concepts that are most recent and which are used in the industry.Project Engineering and Management course is designed for everyone including Mechanical and Electrical engineers. This course doesn't include core Civil Engineering subjects. This majorly focuses on Project Management.Real Estate and Urban Infrastructure Management is a course which deals with the Real Estate sector and modern infrastructure concepts. Many companies visit for recruitment of REUIM engineers specifically. You can say this is a booming sector.Infrastructure Finance, Development and Management specifically is for people who are interested in Financing and Infrastructure Finance sector. Majorly deals with Mathematical subjects. Even banks come for recruitment.Coming to placements, NICMAR PUNE campus is the best college in INDIA in terms of num. Of companies visiting for Placements. ACM alone saw 145 companies last placement season (2015–2016). The avg. Salary is 5.5 LPA which is seeing a decreasing trend because of Increase in INTAKE.ALTHOUGH THE WEBSITE CLAIMS A 100% PLACEMENT RECORD, in recent years, it has not able to achieve it. The placement statistics is 82–85% which is still awesome. I don't think of any other college that has such staggering numbers.Most people who come to NICMAR have a min work experience of 2 years. People come here only for white collar jobs like Project Manager, Construction Manager etc.Getting into NICMAR is relatively very easy compared to exams like GATE. 1 month of thorough preparation of R S AGARWAL Aptitude is more than sufficient. The Interview process will also be simple. They will be asking questions on civil engineering and your final year project work. The key is getting into NICMAR PUNE campus!!! Very very important.And don't worry about backlogs! If you are ready to work hard and study well in these two years, you'll still be eligible for many many companies.My suggestion is, work for 2 years in the industry to know about the various sectors! Learn about the industry and you'll be able to recognise which is better for you!All the best :)