Real estate industry covers many aspects of the property such as development, leasing, appraisal, marketing, and management of commercial, residential, and industrial properties. The industry fluctuates depending on the economies but at the same time remains consistent since people always need homes and businesses need commercial space.
What is Real Estate?
Real estate is any real property consisting of land and improvements such as fixtures (i.e. access door, lighting, awnings, etc.), buildings, roads, structures, and even utility systems. Here are the four types of real estate:
Residential - This includes both new construction and resale. A common category of residential real estate is single-family homes. Other residential real estates include condominiums, co-ops, townhouses, triple-deckers, high-value homes, duplexes, quadplexes, vacation, and multi-generational homes.
Commercial - Included in this type of real estate are strip malls, shopping centers, educational and medical buildings, hotels, and offices. Apartments, although used for residences, are often considered commercial since they are owned to produce income.
Industrial - This kind of real estate includes manufacturing buildings and property, including warehouses. There can be various uses for industrial buildings such as research, production, distribution, and storage of goods. However, buildings where goods are distributed, are considered as commercial real estate
Land - Land can either mean vacant land, ranches, or working farms. Subcategories of this kind of real estate include undeveloped, early development or reuse, subdivisions, and site assembly.
How the Real Industry Works
Now that you know about the types of real estate, let’s see how the real industry works and what major jobs and careers there are. Overall, there are six areas in the industry.
Development
Real estate development is the process of purchasing raw land, rezoning, renovation and construction of buildings, as well as sale or lease of finished products to end-users. Real estate developers end profit by adding value to the land such as creating buildings or improvements or rezoning and taking a risk in financing a project.
Sales and Marketing
Firms that focus primarily on sales and marketing work with developers to sell buildings and units that they create. Commissions are earned by these firms for creating all marketing material and using sales agents to sell completed units. Sales and marketing firms focus more on new units.
Brokerage
A brokerage is a firm with a team of real estate agents or realtors as employees. The real estate agents help in facilitating a transaction between buyers and sellers of property. One of their jobs is to represent either party and help them achieve the purchase or sale with the best possible team.
Property Management
Property management firms play a role in helping real estate owners rent out the units in their buildings. Some of their jobs include collecting rent, fixing deficiencies, performing repairs, showing units, and managing the tenants. They charge a fee which is a percentage of the rent to property owners.
Undeniably, people will always need shelter and places to work in and real estate professionals are the ones who help them find homes, commercial spaces, and other properties. There will always be more competition for real estate jobs but opportunities in the real estate business will never run out.