[debo_]

It also depends on how hot the housing market is at any given time. Often time a realtor is just someone who decided everything else was too much work. (My whole family has been in the business for almost 70 years, both commercial and residential.)

[SoftTalker]

I'm sure some do more, but my personal experience on the sales side is that realtors do nothing except serve as gatekeepers to get your house listed in the local MLS. Then they show up at closing to collect their commission.

On the buying side, they do more such as drive prospective buyers around to look at houses, though it's been long enough since I bought a house that I don't know how much virtual tours have replaced this. Either way, it's not what I'd call difficult work.

[pc86]

It is "work" in the sense that you can be busy doing things. Nothing is difficult by any reasonable sense of the word. All the realtors I know who are actually successful are constantly busy, constantly taking phone calls or responding to texts, there's very little downtime. I'm sure there's some nuance to it, and it probably helps to be in the business for a long time, but it's a backup job for 99% of people for a reason.

I've bought and sold a handful of properties in a couple states through my life and have dealt with probably 2 dozen realtors in some professional capacity, and only 1 has been what I would call "good" and that was basically just him giving us insight into the market, being willing to tell us not to buy a house because it wouldn't fit our needs 5 years in the future, etc. Basically just willing to sacrifice a faster or larger commission to get us what we wanted rather than just closing a deal ASAP, which IMO should be the minimum and not the mark of a "good" realtor.