low retentivity and low coercive force Electromagnets are made of soft iron because soft iron haslow retentivity -  When soft iron is placed inside a solenoid to make an electromagnet and current is passed through the solenoid,magnetism of the solenoid is incresed thousand folds. When the current is switched off, the magnetism is removed instantly because of the low retentivity of soft iron.Low coercivity - it has low coercivity so that area under the hysteresis cureve for soft iron is very small hysterisis loss in case of soft iron is small.