[sharkweek]

Two anecdotes:

Buying a house is the biggest list of "fees" I've ever seen in my life. I felt so nickel-and-dimed with random $50-500 fees tacked onto every part of the transaction. My mom just sold a condo as well, same thing with tons of superfluous random fees throughout the process on that side of the transaction.

A friend of mine, who is a really nice guy, so I don't hold this against him at all, but was kind of flopping in his career until his early 30s. Started as a real estate agent out of the blue in the Seattle market a few years back. Is now making 2-3x more than most of us. I'm happy to see him successful, but I also take this as an example of the job having pretty low barrier to entry to make a lot of money.