10 worst college majors for your career

MattKing said:

Lots of agents lose lots of money. A fair number of the more successful ones make lots of money.

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Every time I have sold a house and bought another one, I have paid the estate agent twice as much as the solicitor. I think this is wrong.

Estate agents here charge a percentage of the sale price as their fee. I think it would be more fair if they charged a fixed fee,


Steve.

eddie said:

Maybe if you think of it in only financial terms (and the particular university is expensive). Life should be about more than money. How much is finding an avocation which satisfies your soul worth? What are you willing to sacrifice, monetarily, to wake up in the morning excited about the day ahead? What's it worth to never having to look back, in old age, and say, "what if...?" The article is from a source which measures success (and failure) in dollars (and cents). For those who measure such things differently, it's meaningless.

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You will not get an argument from me. My wife is a teacher, here in the USA it is a relatively low ROI occupation, compared to the cost of the college degree and getting the teaching credential. She and I have had conversations about how one can choose to be in an occupation which one LOVES and earn less money, or be in an occupation that simply brings in more money for a more comfortable lifestype yet little personal satisfaction! And a select few lucky people get both.

Steve Smith said:

Every time I have sold a house and bought another one, I have paid the estate agent twice as much as the solicitor. I think this is wrong.

Estate agents here charge a percentage of the sale price as their fee. I think it would be more fair if they charged a fixed fee,


Steve.

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The solicitor would have been entitled to be paid for their work, whether the sale and purchased completed, or not.

Except in certain cases, the realtors get nothing for their work, unless the sales complete. If the fee was a fixed sum, the realtors would probably be insisting on payment for their work whether or not a sale completes.

I don't have any accurate numbers about it, but I would guess that at least half of the listing agreements don't result in a sale, and that at least three quarters of all potential purchasers don't end up purchasing through the agents that originally assist them.

So for all those (non-sale) related efforts and incurred expenses, the realtors get nothing. So the prices charged for completed sales reflect the fact that most realtors get paid nothing for most of their work.

And most property owners seem to like it when the realtors are perceived to have a financial interest in maximizing the price.

It is the way that pricing in that "market" has evolved. There are problems with it, and there certainly have been some attempts to change things, but I think that no one has yet come up with an alternative that is acceptable to the market.

What has this to do with the photographic market? Well that market too is going through changes, and those changes mean a lack of appreciation for what we as photographers value.

MattKing said:

The solicitor would have been entitled to be paid for their work, whether the sale and purchased completed, or not.

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And then you have the issue of why the real estate agents for both parties should collect 6% (1/2 to each side of the transaction)...the property sold originally for $40000 in 1970, and it just sold for 2,000,000 in 2015...fees to real estate agents of $2400 in 1970, fees $120000 in 2015 for the same single transaction! What other profession has seen income for the identical work rise by a factor of 50x in that same time period?!

wiltw said:

And then you have the issue of why the real estate agents for both parties should collect 6% (1/2 to each side of the transaction)...the property sold originally for $40000 in 1970, and it just sold for 2,000,000 in 2015...fees to real estate agents of $2400 in 1970, fees $120000 in 2015 for the same single transaction!

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In our area, the first $100,000.00 attracts a 7% commission and the rest attracts a commission between 2.5% and 3.5%, depending on a number of factors - so $64,000.00 or so.

That is for the most common, full service listings.

The problem with arguing against the big commission on the $2,000,000.00 sale is that the market that brought rise to the $2,000,000.00 sale is at least partially the result of the efforts over 45 years of the numerous realtors who worked there during that period - if the commissions were lower, the sale prices would be too.

Lets see, a market where the successful make really large amounts of money and the less successful lose large amounts of money, and the customer doesn't see where the value doesn't come from.

Where have we seen something like that before?

Well I guess I am screwed...between music (my actual major) and photography, looks like I'm doomed! Hahaha! :munch:

cliveh said:

The qualification is of no consequence. It's what you achieve with it that counts.

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BINGO!

APUGuser19 said:

A lot of them. It's inflation. And believe me, a realtor WORKS for a sale.

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Not in this country. They do next to nothing in my experience.

And where does 'real' come from? Here they are estate agents but the US call it 'real' estate. Is there imaginary estate too?!!

MattKing said:

The problem with arguing against the big commission on the $2,000,000.00 sale is that the market that brought rise to the $2,000,000.00 sale is at least partially the result of the efforts over 45 years of the numerous realtors who worked there during that period - if the commissions were lower, the sale prices would be too.

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My argument is that the solicitor gets a fixed fee regardless of the sale price (variable a bit if extra work is needed) whereas an estate agent could sell a very expensive house in a couple of days with not much effort and get a big reward or spend months selling a low priced house and make less money.

I don't mind people being paid fairly for the work they do but my experience has always been that my solicitor has put a lot into every sale and purchase I have been involved in but the estate agent hasn't done much more than put a picture in the paper and show a few people round - yet they got twice as much money.

MattKing said:

In our area, the first $100,000.00 attracts a 7% commission and the rest attracts a commission between 2.5% and 3.5%, depending on a number of factors - so $64,000.00 or so.

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Wow. And I'm complaining about a much lower level!

In terms of fees, overwhelmingly, estate agents charge a percentage fee, which can be anywhere between 0.75% and 3.5% of the agreed selling price for your home depending on the type of contract you opt for with your estate agent. Our recent mystery shopping research of agents willing to disclose their standard fee indicated the average fee for a sole agency contract was 1.5% + VAT, similarly, a survey for Which? found the national average was 1.8% + VAT

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Steve.

Although not a source of pride, I graduated from high school with a 1.75 (out of 4.0) grade average.

I now work in management for a multinational company, and my income is six figures. Lots of years of work, changing jobs to get experience, moving large distances for opportunities, and generally doing whatever I had to do to move ahead.

I did attend some college. I did graduate from the U.S. Navy Nuclear power program.

I now hire people for our facility. I look for two types of experience. Experience relevant to our industry, and good education. More importantly is the attitude of the applicant. If they are hungry for the opportunity, that is the most important quality. I hired a 4 year degree applicant this week, whose college major gives him no real experience in our field. However, the degree shows that he is trainable, and will do what is needed to achieve a goal.

When I asked him why he wanted this job, and was not using his degree, his answer was "I was born and raised in this area. I want to stay here and raise children here. I will do any job that lets me do that." So far he shows good promise, and the others on the team think he will make it.

I learned a long time ago.... Do not hire people for what they know. Hire them for what they can be.

If you ever wind up across the desk from me, I am not looking so much at the you of today. I am looking at you in five to ten years...


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

APUGuser19 said:

A lot of them. It's inflation. And believe me, a realtor WORKS for a sale. The realtor is off work about as much a country doctor--never.

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A lot of folks work hard in their jobs. Why should a realtor earn 50X for the sale of the identical property ($2400 in 1970 vs. $120000 in 2015) when the CPI has risen only 6.3x in that same interval...if you and I earn 6x more to keep up with the CPI doing the same job, why 50x as much for the realtor for the identical amount of work now as 45 years ago?! It is not as if you or I work only 1/8 as hard as we did before, is it?

APUGuser19 said:

Because it's the free enterprise system. Besides, a realtor may have and will certainly have a "drought", where he can't seem to give away ice water in Death Valley for a long stretch. It's the breaks of the game. And remember the Alternative Minimum Tax. They can be slammed with that. You show me a filthy rich broker and I'll show you someone who has EARNED it. Hope I've shown another point of view.

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I did some research http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2005/08/bubblelusions.html and it turns out that the number of realtors increases during boom times so that the effective per-realtor income remains constant. When housing prices rose, the number of agents did as well, and this, in turn, reduced the number of houses each agent sold by almost exactly the same proportion as the price increase. So in SF where there were 6x as much $ per sale compared to Ohio, there were also about 6x times as many realtors in SF, so the income per realtor resulted flat incomes even in times of boom because one person would get only 1/6 of the transactions.