Powerful Geography
Real Estate Agent

Real Estate Agent

Real Estate Agent

I. JOB SUMMARY

Main Topic: Human Geography
Secondary Topic: Places and Region 

Overview: Real estate sales agents help connect people to available properties to rent or buy, or they may help people sell their property. They list and prepare properties for sale, look for prospective buyers or renters, show the prospective buyers or renters the property, and create contracts for the sale or rental of the property.

Real estate agents are responsible for buying and selling property, which includes generating customer base, counseling clients on market conditions, developing competitive market prices by comparing properties, creating lists for real estate sale properties, with information about the property’s location, features, square footage, etc. Real estate agent also shows properties to potential buyers and renters, facilitates negotiations between buyers and sellers, and promotes properties with ads, listings, and open houses. Geography helps in evaluating the price of land or real estate. The important geographical knowledge for this job includes the impact on value of zoning, available municipal services, transportation, environmental features, and potential return on the investment. Human geography provides real estate agents with the knowledge of socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the neighborhoods. Physical geography helps in evaluating the landscape and potential environmental hazards of the area.

Geographers make excellent real estate sales agents because they must be familiar with the human and urban geographies of a region in order to sell properties, such as the local listing prices for a neighborhood. They must be able to match what a potential buyer/renter wants with a geographical location. At the same time, they must be able to identify the benefits of a location in order to sway buyers/renters to consider the property.

Geographers at Work: Human Geographers, Urban Geographers, Economic Geographers

Recommended College Courses: Human Geography, Regional Geography, Urban Geography, Economic Geography

Skills: Location analysis, environmental analysis, mapping, working with census data, statistics, human resource management, real estate market analysis, economic geography, human geography, Analyzing geographical data

Occupation Group:  Sales

Learn more about Real Estate Agents from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Department of Labor: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/real-estate-brokers-and-sales-agents.htm

https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes419022.htm

Written by Kaleigh Shuler and Daria Andrievskikh

II. POWERFUL GEOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE

Real estate brokers and sales agents help clients buy, sell, and rent properties.
Real estate brokers and sales agents help clients buy, sell, and rent properties.