development preferred realty welcome judy thanks g d i'm glad to be here thank you for coming judi also has discovered a career internship program that is very exciting and we're going to talk about that a little later in the show first judy i am very curious how did you get into real estate well it wasn't a planned event i had been teaching for about twenty five years i taught a conservatory school of the arts and the last three years i had been offered a position in florida so we moved to florida and in the third year of teaching there got laid off and didn't know what to do it was devastating to be laid off after all those years of teaching and friend of mine said just get your real estate license while you decide what you want to do and so that's what i did and the rest is history i've been real estate ever since that's wonderful and i understand you have one thousand different locations that you're traveling around to yet in the fall into an area prudential preferred has nineteen offices we just recently opened in league in new year and our newest office opened this week at castillo village and that's wonderful now judy you mentioned that it wasn't a planned thing and you also did things previously before you became a realtor so what type of person do you think would get into the business i think somebody who's looking for a new career or somebody who's tired of being in the cubicles from nine to five somebody who is out of college couple of year is not happy with the job market and looking for something to do if you have high energy you want to career where no two days are ever the saying you're your own boss you enjoy helping people make their dreams come true you earn in direct proportion to how hard you work with on a salary where somebody says this is what you're worth it's a great way to make a living but definitely sounds like it and a lot of those points are the reasons i myself came into the  business what about this college internship program you mentioned a lot of young people who are now getting involved in real estate can you tell me a little bit about that why did you found that i've always thought that the least education we give students is in real estate and almost everybody is going to buy a home at some point in their life and so we needed to get a program that not only educated college students on the process of buying a house but also might interest them in becoming real estate agents themselves as you know it's become very high tech a lot of our agents are older and are not comfortable with the technology so we started an internship program we have six colleges involved at the moment we interview students mostly there for sales and marketing majors and you do get three college credits for the program it is an unpaid internship but the students learn so much about real estate and about title and about the mortgage industry that it's a great way to break into a whole new field for them and i just we just graduated from real estate educator school our first college intern he was an interne last year decided he liked it so much that he decided to go and get his license and he's going to start selling hopefully by january oh my gosh that's amazing so it seems relatively easy to get into he said there are six colleges now offering this program we currently have six schools who participate and give students three call each credits we are open to more students i just met with chatham college and they're posting the internship on their college career site as well we also have another internship coming up that would be a person working directly with vice president of marketing and that's also going to be a three college credit course so it's pretty exciting that's fascinating and now is the time i feel for the students to get into real estate more than ever with our current market the low interest rates everyone's been hearing about and our area it's fabulous the growth and the real estate market in general can you give us something the stakes on the real estate market well pittsburgh never suffered the big up and down the other cities have suffered and having come from florida where we saw the market go really high and then bottom out it could be devastating but in pittsburgh we just clawed along we are a terrific real estate market right now every single county is up in sales as you know and in sales price so we're looking for agents to jump on board we have all these companies moving people into the area between the energy resource companies and google it's pretty good deal yes i agree with you and i just heard on the radio this morning that the foreclosure rate is the lowest it's been in six years which now the media is finally getting on board and agreeing with us that the market is great and buying homes is is now it's like a sale with the interest rates i can't say enough about that let's take a break right now and when we come back we'll pick up with the internship program 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fundamentals of real estate and practices real estate each course is thirty hours in length and you can do those online or there are many different schools in the area you can go just online to the different real estate companies and see what they are where their schools are when you've passed when you've gone through both of these classes you then pay the state of pennsylvania fifty eight dollars to take the test the real estate test is a multiple choice test it's computerized you arrange to go at your own time whatever day and time is the best for you you take the test you pass the test you pay the state of pennsylvania one hundred seven dollars and you have your license and you're good to go and you hope that the company you go for has a good training program because you don't learn much about the day to day out the cation real estate as you know y yes so you need further education once you do become licensed and i understand that some of the companies are reimbursed saying a real estate licensee once they have passed their test and maybe had a closings there are several companies that are doing that there are also companies that will actually give scholarships to take classes and of course the religious association of metropolitan pittsburgh offers those classes as well so we have had several people take them online a lot of young people are really into online classes and so it works well for them that's what i was thinking it's a relatively small investment for what can become a huge career a lot of financial backing has helped that what do you think you can do with a life and once you have it i mean is it does it just stop it being an agent showing houses i think a lot people aren't exactly sure what they could do with their life and there many avenues in real estate and i think when you take classes in real estate you become aware of all the different things there are that you can do with a license we have teams in our office as you have in yours and you can be a licensed agent working thirteen i got into the business as a buyer's agent a friend of mine was a top producer in palm beach county and she needed a buyer's agent so it was my job to take people out and show them property and narrow the properties down and then she took over and help negotiate the deal and i got a percentage of her commission in that respect it sounds nice and it's great you know that we also can put licenses in referral i'd tell the students to start getting their license to say i don't know if i really want to do this get a license if the dream job comes along in the meantime you could put your license in referral most people have never heard of that referral network but you know it it means that you can refer another person in any city in any state to a particular religion or and you get a part of that commission for making that phone call so it's a pretty good deal for full so if you have a four time job doing something else and your mother is going to sell our house you can actually take that license out do that transaction get paid for it or you could refer it to somebody who's an active realtor if your license is in referral we do have part time agents we do think a lot of people do well part time if they have a system that works there are some companies that discourage that but we actually encourage it we've had a lot of people start part time and then flip to full time real estate when they start going strong and i personally know of some agents who work with investors all the time or they're just dealing with foreclosures or some kind of an etch and that seems to be very fruitful with them as a matter of fact we just started an investment software package that stand asked because there's so much and so many people coming here to invest in real estate because it's a stable market and so it's it's becoming a whole new industry in the pittsburgh area and also i think that the togolese skills obviously computer skills internet marketing admin skills all relate to job opportunities that judy what else can you tell us about taking the test and the investment that you have to make prior to that is there a lot of studying i mean i'm just thinking if you know whether you're eighteen or sixty and you just decide that you want to do this what would be the first step that they would do besides calling one of us the first step would be to call somebody and come in and talk to a realtor a manager our recruiter or whatever and learn exactly what is the involved i do think you have to study the pass fail rate on the pennsylvania test first time is about fifty percent and so the people who think you can come to class and not study are incorrect you really do have to confess constantly review the material there are two sections to the state tests the national section and then the state section you can pass one of those and not pass the other but it doesn't matter you just go back in the next day and can take it over again ok once you finish the classes we advise people to take a cram course everybody offers cram courses there's also a great on line program licensed tutor dot com that people are very happy with when they go through that program seems to really help them i know as somebody who was a teacher for so many years i felt on top of my game and when i got my real estate licen i was terrified that there was so much i needed to learn and didn't know that i almost walked out of the test i was like a nervous wreck about taking the test but i just figured what's the worst that could happen i won't pass it i'll tell you take it again i pass it i'm good for you so is there an age requirement though what do you need to be eighteen you have to be at least eighteen years and ok and that the total hours that you need to have class time are study time before you can take that test can you tell us you have to have sixty hours of education however there is a bill on the table right now they're considering moving that to ninety hours so anybody who's interested right now hurry up get it right away hurry up the markets ready to explode in january anyway that's right and it can be class time or internet time you mentioned you can do these online as well yes the from the comfort of your own home your i do all of this correct it's amazing it is ok well i hope that we've given you some useful information and that we've enticed many of you to give us a call to go home and jeannie mcdade and if you would join us for our next show we'll have another guest on real estate agency that will give us some more information about the real estate market thank you for watching