Before I begin to research and discuss what real estate market was, is, and will be like in South Beach, Florida, I think it is important that I share some thoughts on what my expectations are for my new job. This is the biggest leap for me personally in my entire life- that is, graduating from college and beginning my career on my own. I try and visualize what my life will be like for the next couple years and beyond, but, many adults who has gone through this transition already have told me that life will always be different than you think it will be. This really made me think, and changed the way that I thought about my future. Instead of picturing exactly what my ideal life would be like for the future, I simplified and thought about general goals to have such as working a job I enjoy, putting my full effort into it, being happy with my location, and not having my career take over my life. This made it easier for me and made me a little bit less nervous about having everything in my life be perfect and the exact way that I would want it. I also set long and short term goals for career in order to put in perspective for w=myself what I want to achieve. These goals are both deal with what position I will hold in my career and how much money I would like to make. This helps motivate me and gives me a general direction to go in as well as sets a benchmark to what I believe would be successful for me in my eyes. I also set out a plan for achieving these things whether it be selling a certain amount of condominiums, joining certain boards and organizations, networking with certain people an so on. I am still not sure exactly what it takes to be successful but I set out a plan for myself in order to make being successful seem achievable for me. A quote that always stuck with me is : (I can’t remember who said it) “A goal without a plan is just a dream”. This made a lot of sense to me and really resonated with me because you can wish for whatever you want, whether it be making it to the graduating college, making it to the NFL, being an actress, or being a successful realtor, but if you don’t have a path carved out that you will dedicate yourself to to attain whatever goal you have in mind it will be very difficult to get there and you might get lost along the way. But, I think that it is okay to derail a bit along that path to success as long as you keep that goal in mind. Your path to that goal might not be a direct line. You may encounter obstacles and may have to overcome diversity that either slows you down or forces you to change course. You may learn along the way that there is a better, different way to reach your goal whether it be meeting new people or discovering a strength that you never knew you had that forces you to achieve your goal differently than you planned. You can still achieve that original goal that you had in mind but the way you got there could be completely different that you thought. The important thing was that you had a plan and stuck to it and possibly found new ground on the way to your goal, but still achieved it overall. This is why I have decided not to picture exactly what my life will be life going into my career and am not trying to plan out every single step of the way. I am going to learn a lot along the way as well as a lot about myself. The way that I achieve success may be different than anybody else and that is okay with me. As a standing Senior, when I look back on my entire college career and all of the accomplishments and success that I had, I could not have pictured it when I was in High School no matter how many hours I spent trying. My HPU experience was full of new experiences and a lot of learning about myself as a person. I always knew that I would have to work hard to achieve success in school, but never could have imagined how it would play out. I think this is an important learning period for me as I transition into my career and maybe I won’t try and expect much and let it just play out. I will continue to show a strong work ethic and be myself but I won’t won’t consider things being different than I expected a failure. I am excited about the future being unknown and how I will evolve over and what I will learn over the next few years. This is the biggest turning point in my life.
Pilot
My name is Alex Morhaim, I am a 21 year old Senior at High Point University from Long Island New York. I am a Business Administration Major with a minor in Marketing and am a licensed real estate agent in the state of Florida. This is my first time ever engaging in writing any type of blog on a consistent basis, and wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to do so in order to enhance my life somehow. I thought about what I was going to write about all week- I thought about writing about baseball which is a passion of mine, being a student at HPU, or just life in general. Then I thought about my future and my career and came to the conclusion that I was going to utilize the opportunity to perform research on my future career post-graduation as a real estate agent in South Beach Florida. During the process attaining my real estate license after a 68 hour course and passing the state exam for Florida, as well as interning at the real estate firm that eventually hired me, I learned the basic principles, practices, laws, and a little bit about the South Beach real estate market that will help me in my career. In order to propel myself further and gain as much information as possible about the South Beach real estate market, I decided to perform research by looking at all of the major online publications about the market including its history, trends, current state of the market, and where it is to be expected to be in the future. I believe that this is is important since it is going to be the career path that I am taking and any business person will tell you that one of the most important things to know before going into a career field is to know your industry and market like the back of your hand. I believe that this will give me an advantage going into my first year as a real estate agent as I will be familiar with the market which can help me avoid making mistakes that could have been avoided by knowing what is going on around me, and ultimately make me feel more comfortable in a professional environment that I have never been exposed to before. I will begin this stream of blog posts by explaining how I came to decide to go into real estate and how I got hired right out of college.
My first exposure to the real estate market came during the summer after my freshman year at HPU where I decided along with a lot of advice from my family and faculty at the school, to try and get an internship in order to build my resume. I wasn’t sure what field I wanted togo into first, but as a business major I decided I wanted something related to my field of study. After talking to some friends and family members about this, real estate came up quite a few times and it sounded like an interesting field to go into and I always liked the idea of sales so I decided to try and get an internship in real estate. I decided to cold call every real estate firm in my town and a few that surrounded it- I must have called about 10-12 asking if any realtors were interested in having a college student shadow them. After all of those phone calls, one realtor contacted me back after leaving them a message almost immediately. I knew nothing about him other than he worked as an residential real estate agent at Prudential Douglas-Elliman in my town of Setauket, New York. He was more than happy to have me come in and teach me the ropes. I quickly realized that he was one of the most successful realtors on Long Island and as a Freshman I was a bit intimidated but it gave me an opportunity to learn a lot from such a successful worker in his field. I asked a lot of questions about what he did but one thing I was really interested in was what he got out of his job and what the benefits were, and not necessarily monetary benefits. I was still not sure if this was the industry for me so I wanted to see if it was a good fit. He told me that he got a lot of pleasure out of facilitating and helping people find a new home because it is such a large emotional decision that usually makes a family very happy, and he was happy to be a part of that. I always got pleasure out of helping people but didn’t want to go to school for 10 years and be a doctor and saw this as a way that I can help people and make them happy. after a few months of shadowing the agent, I began to heavily consider this as a career path.
How i ended up as a licensed real estate agent in the state of Florida didn’t materialize until this past summer after my Junior year. I have always wanted to live in a warm climate and start my life somewhere where I could avoid winters. Living in New York during the winter is one of the most miserable experiences and I didn’t want to experience it again. I have a lot of family in Florida and as I would visit all my life I began to realize that it was a destination that I wanted to be. I had a family member, Jack, who is my fathers cousin, who was a real estate broker in South Beach Florida and owned a real estate firm with his partner.. They bought and sold condominiums in South Beach and were extremely successful. I talked to him about getting into real estate and told him that I was going to try and get my license in Florida over the 2014 summer. He suggested that while I was down there that I should come into his office and intern and he would show me the ropes similar to what I did freshman year. This seemed like such an incredible opportunity for me as I would simultaneously be studying in the classroom to prep for the state exam and then also gain real world experience from an extremely successful realtor in South Beach. I flew down in the beginning of June ready to take my first steps towards my career, and I was extremely excited. The first day that I was supposed to meet Jack at the office and begin learning about the market and industry I was excited but a bit nervous because I was entering such a successful establishment that had made a name for itself for a number of years. I got there an hour before I was supposed to meet him. He lived in one of the condominium units that he sold which was a block away from his office so he told me to park in his lot. I tried calling him numerous times and he wouldn’t pick up so I couldn’t get past security. About an hour and a half passed and I still didn’t hear anything from him which i thought was odd but thought maybe he had a meeting in the morning that went long. after another half hour I walked over to the office and introduced myself to the secretary and explained to her what was going on. She informed me that Jack hadn’t been in the office yet and nobody knew where he was. after calling him again and again and contacting family members everybody began to get extremely worried. We started hearing that there was an ambulance at his apartment and that he had an accident and everybody was very confused. Jack’s partners son who worked in the office grabbed me and walked over to his apartment with me to see what was going on. When we got there we found out the extremely tragic news. Jack passed away in his apartment the night before completely abrupt and premature at only 49 years old. He had a seizure and nobody was around to bring him to the hospital. I could not believe what was going on and everybody was in complete shock. The first day I arrive in Florida to begin my path to getting my license and learning from one of the best out there, it crumbles down in front of me. I was extremely upset but it wasn’t about me- it was about the rest of my family in Florida and Jack’s partner who lost his best friend. His partner amongst everything going on still offered for me to come into the office after everything got settled and have me learn from him. I could not believe the opportunity he was giving me after everything that went on. I didn’t want to give up after this and have it bring me down and I still had a goal in mind which was to get my real estate license. I had even more motivation now to do it for Jack. I got through the 68 hour real estate school course and passed the class exam. This made me eligible to take the state exam which if passed, would make me a licensed real estate agent in the state of Florida. the exam had a 50% fail rate for first time takers and a 68% film rate for those who take it again if they failed the first time. These were intimidating statistics but I studied every moment I could and ended up passing the exam. I felt so many different emotions. I knew Jack would have been proud. While working in the office with Jacks partner everyday that I didn’t have class, he taught me so much about the real estate and how to be successful. I observed everything he did and did many tasks for him. He began to like me a lot and gave me a lot of praise and after the summer was over and I earned my license he offered me a job as a real estate agent at his company because he saw me as someone who could help elevate it. I was extremely appreciative of everything he had done for me but he told me that I earned it and he believed I would be very successful. I will begin my work there after graduating HPU this semester.
Looking back on the entire experience, the way everything unfolded was incredible but it ended on such a positive note. It taught me how to persevere and how to overcome obstacles and not give up. I am extremely proud of my accomplishment but more proud to work for a company where Jack worked that had such great integrity and success. I want to do my best to enhance the company as much as possible and serve as an asset to it and not a hindrance, and is my motivation for learning as much as possible about the real estate market in South Beach where I will be working, and is why I am using this blog as a way to do so and share my thought and findings.
amorhaimhpu 