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Show IMMim What Shall li Be? J REAL ESTATE? It is a comprehensive occupa- tion that offers the ambitious T boy several distinct and profit- J able lines of advancement. How T he may break into the business, and how he may advance along J several lines. The remunera- tion of various positions. The J possibilities of getting into profit- able business for himself. I BY C. W. JENNINGS. x , ,.WHILE you have been think-W think-W lnf( over the problem of X'1 JGur boy's life work. nas it occurred to you that the apparently well known real estate business might be just the thing? But don't tnink for a moment that all your boy would have to do after he got started in this line of endeavor would be to buy and sell lots; for, though that is an important phase of the business, and one, to make a high j success, requiring much ability, modern, mod-ern, advancement has raised the real estate business to such importance as to embrace the best efforts in a large number of distinct specialties. So in this truly comprehensive occupation will be .found such a variety of work that, after he is started in it, your boy can develop his choice of several lines of work, each of which may lead on to a good sized competence, perhaps a fortune. There is no special preliminary education edu-cation ' that would be of particular value to a boy taking up real estate for bis lifework, and more than all the general learning he can acquire. Even the schools and colleges have not seen fit to take up real estate as a branch of learning, all that is being done in a direct educational way being a few courses taught by the Young Men's Christian association in some of the large cities, and a few more or less complete correspondence courses. So a boy's only chance to learn the business is to go right at it and get a Job with a real estate firm. Of course the larger the firm, the greater variety of opportunities he will have to advance, ad-vance, and some of them are great enough to take him to the very top of the profession. His first job will be that of ordinary office youth at a salary of four or five dollars a week, if the candidate should be particularly young and inexperienced, inexperi-enced, or, if he has gone through high school and can write and figure pretty well, he might be put on at a minor clerkship at eight or ten dollars a week, or even might start in as a stenographer or. typist. Your boy, of course, will wish to get a general knowledge of the business before he attempts to take up any particular par-ticular line, and so he will likely go through some or all of the different stages of filing clerk, record clerk, auditor's au-ditor's clerk, mortgage clerk, etc., being promoted from time to time, till, after three to five years, he will be getting $18 to $25 a week. He can stick to the clerical end and become a chief clerk of one of the departments depart-ments at say as much as $35 weekly. In the meantime, however, if he desires de-sires to get out of the purely office end, he w'ill be picking up pointers on outside work, and, perhaps, be learning how to sell and buy lots. There is more in this than appears at first thought, for the qualities that make a successful book agent are not enough to make a successful real estate salesman. sales-man. To sell lots successfully, your boy must know pretty muca everything that enters into a variety of things that don't appear on the surface. He must, for instance, have a good acquaintance ac-quaintance with the general values of property in the neighborhood; the cost of various obvious improvements that have to be made; the price of adjoining adjoin-ing and nearby property; street Improvements Im-provements and assessments; what will be charged to make connections with sewer and gas mains; the facilities facili-ties and cost of the prospective owner getting to his place of business; advice ad-vice as to the cost and difficulty of getting a mortgage on the property, etc., etc. In addition, he must have the ability of a salesman; for, granted that he can furnish all these details, he still nas to convince the caller that the particular piece of property under consideration is just the one he wants; and then your boy has to deal with the seller, who may be an uncompromis-1 uncompromis-1 ing individual. A first class salesman, generally speaking, will earn anywhere from $3,000 up to $15,000 or more a year in commissions. Some become so proficient profi-cient that they scorn all other lines of work and offers of salary and stick to selling real estate until they accumulate accumu-late the stake to retire on. The other lines open to your boy? Well, almost every phase of this business busi-ness is a specialty. He must know all the details about unimproved property. This may be suburban lots, w hich it is desired to acquire in big chunks for the purpose of making improvements and selling as improved property. Then he has to know how to advertise and make opportunities to unload the property prop-erty after it is improved. He must know the cost of building apartment heuses, and the attractive features of various modern improvements in such dwellings so as to lure tenants to them. He must be a student of the trend of traffic, so as to appraise office buildings build-ings and the value of land adapted to such purposes. Factory sites, transportation trans-portation facilities, tenements, stores, boulevards, parks, small farms (including (in-cluding tue adaptability of the soil for agricultural purposes), the trend of population of various classes, the probability of this particular section becoming a residence or a business section all this has to be within his ken; and, if the customer should wish to build a store or a house or an office of-fice building or an apartment house or a factory, he must be ready to tell him glibly of the cost, and the formalities to be gone through, and the probable revenues, and the taxes, and details about possible loans. All this enters into the real estate business, as well as other specialties, such as civil engineering and laying out and grading the property; various phases of finances, such as raising money and mortgages, and financial returns, such as rents, etc.; probable cost of administration, including janitors, jani-tors, porters, scrubwomen, firemen, etc.; the cost and consumption of coal; the cost and placing of fire insurance, most of the big operating companies placing insurance on the property they handle; the placing of mortgages, etc. Then there are companies that take a suburban wilderness and turn it into a habitable section, lay out the ground and erect buildings work which re- quires close acquaintance with build ing regulations and real estate laws and employ their own architects and building superintendents and civil and constructive engineers. What are the initial steps your boy has to go through before he can take a leading part in all this maze of industry? .Well, he goes from a $20 a week clerkship in one of the office ends to one of the specialties, and becomes be-comes a chief clerk in that. Then, as he has displayed particular ability In one direction, he is made assistant to one of the superintendants at $30 or sc weekly; then becomes a construction superintendent, or head of a civil engineering en-gineering corps, or a head rental or iiales agent, or building superintendent, or auditor, or chief accountant, and will be paid from $3,000 to $8,000 a year, according to the importance of the company he has connected himself with. If he elects to remain with the company, com-pany, the next step will be a managership man-agership at increased salary, and, eventually, the presidency perhaps. Also, he may possibly become a leading lead-ing stockholder. Or, at some stage of his progress, he may go into business on his own account, starting at buying or selling a lot or two, or take up the rental business. Many young men have made their start In securing the agency for collecting rents and managing man-aging apartme-.it houses on commission, commis-sion, and in time making this a specialty, spe-cialty, have developed an extensive business. In any event, the young man' who takes up real estate In earnest stands a reasonably fair chance to succeed in some one of the various lines, and to succeed perhaps in a big way. (Copyright, 1910, by the Associated JJt-erary JJt-erary Press.) |