Good things Happen to Those who Hustle.
Having multiple streams of income is one of the keys to building wealth, and side hustles are a great way to add extra income streams to your metaphorical lake of life.
Here are our favorite side hustles for real estate agents that most agents are already cut out for! These are great ways to make extra money on top of maximizing your commissions earnings! Since we will be going over 20 different side hustles, we put them into a few categories:
- Real Estate Side Hustles
- Digital Format / Online Side Hustles
- Working with Other Agent Side Hustles
- Other Sweet Side Hustles for Real Estate Agents
Table of Contents
Real Estate Side Hustles
Side Hustle 1: Buy a Rental Property
Real estate investing is one of the 6 pillars of wealth for real estate agents, and owning rental properties is the most popular form of real estate investing. When you invest in a rental property, you purchase a property to hold on to and rent out to tenants for passive rental income. The gross rental income will then pay down the mortgage, cover ownership expenses and provide you with a steady stream of income as you build equity over time.
The only ongoing investments of your time and money are handling maintenance issues for your tenants and renter turn-over. Both of which can be handled by a property manager if you want purely cash flow income.
Real estate agents have inherent advantages when buying rental properties. For instance, you already have an extensive knowledge of the real estate market and have experience negotiating deals for clients. Real estate agents can even make commissions when they buy rental properties by representing themselves, making it a top side hustle for real estate agents.
Side Hustle 2: Flipping Properties
Real estate agents probably have worked with or at least come across a fair share of house flippers, so you know that when it’s done right, flipping houses can be a lucrative business. As a real estate agent you have all the tools you need to successfully flip a property. You know how to run comps, the costs to rehab a property, have connections with the experts and contractors, and you can net a commission and get your name out there on both ends of the transaction! Plus you can easily keep your eyes on progress while you work your transactions.
Side Hustle 3: Try Property Management
Property management isn’t that difficult with the right tools, and sometimes, staff in place. In fact, a lot of agents are also great property managers. You don’t necessarily need to know how to fix a broken faucet or be an expert plumber, you just need to have the right staff on hand when you get those maintenance calls from your tenants.
Usually property managers are paid 10% of the property’s monthly gross rental income. You could try your hand at it and start making residual monthly income on top of commissions! It can also be a great way for you to gain some experience and insight into rental property ownership for when you’re ready to buy your own rental properties.
Side Hustle 4: List on AirBnb
Short term rentals are great for cash flow. And with the technological advancements of the hospitality industry, you can easily list your own rooms and/or properties on full service websites like AirBnb and create your own short term rental business. This is an especially lucrative side hustle for agents that live in college towns or an area with a hot tourism market.
The best part about listing on AirBnb is that you don’t even have to purchase a whole new property. If you live in a house with extra rooms, you can simply list those and still earn some extra cash every month to add to your income.
Digital Format / Online Side Hustles
Side Hustle 5: Start a Blog
A Blog is one of the most crucial side hustles for real estate agents. You should already have a blog as a real estate agent anyway to demonstrate your local market knowledge and build trust with your prospects. Since a blog is already one of the most important tools for real estate agents, you should find a way, or many ways, to monetize them!
Paid Ads are the most obvious option, but there are more organic ways to make money with your blog such as through affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, or selling your own products.
Side Hustle 6: Monetize YouTube
In recent years we’ve seen many experts and entertainers make a lucrative income through YouTube by posting informative or entertaining videos. From vloggers to personal chefs, it seems like there’s an audience for everyone on YouTube.
As a real estate agent, you have the perfect platform and opportunity to demonstrate your expertise on YouTube. YouTube doesn’t have to be just a lead generation tool for you, just like blogs, it is easy for you monetize your videos. There are plenty of ways you can make monetize your YouTube channel such as paid ads, revenue sharing, and sponsors. As you can see, making money on YouTube is not too different than making money with your blog, but instead of writing, you’re doing it through video.
Side Hustle 7: Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is when you promote someone else’s product on your social media page, YouTube Channel, website, or blog by linking to an online store page, and when someone makes a purchase through the link on your page, you earn a small commission. You can easily harness your favorite social media platform(s) you are already using to market your business and share products you love – that are at least somewhat related to your business – using affiliate links where you get a kickback! This is a great strategy that you can tie in with other side hustles such as blogging to increase your income.
Side Hustle 8: eBooks and Digital Products
Digital assets are things that you can create and sell online such as Ebooks, courses, recipes, designs, templates, spreadsheets, apps, photographs, etc. The value of the digital asset is in the information that it is able to provide for the customers/clients. Digital products can be one of the most ideal side hustles for real estate agents because they will usually require a field of expertise to be largely successful. Since you are already an expert in real estate, it is very easy to create a healthy customer base using your credibility as a Real Estate Agent.
You will need to spend some time and money upfront into creating your digital assets, then you can sell them on online marketplaces and platforms such as Amazon KDP for Ebooks and Udemy for Online Courses. The reason why digital assets is one of the great hustles for real estate agents is that the same asset can be sold over and over again!
Working with Agents Side Hustles
9: Lead Generation for Other Agents
Lead generation can be the most challenging part of a real estate agent’s job. If you are good at paid lead generation, like using Facebook and Google ads, you can help other agents do the same thing for a one time fee – or even better: set them up on a monthly program where you manage it for them and keep getting paid! If you get really good at generating quality leads in volume, you can even consider turning your lead generation side hustle into an agent team!
10: Start an Agent Team
Like we mentioned above, if you are great at lead generation and managing systems, then you might want to consider starting an agent team. A real estate agent team is where multiple agents, usually within the same MLS area, form a team to the mutual benefit of all team members and clients. Once an agent on your team closes a transaction, you will earn a percentage of their commission (usually 25-50%) for generating the lead and the systems you provide.
As a team leader, you will be responsible for lead generation, transaction management, and mentorship. That may sound like a lot of extra work on top of your daily duties as a real estate agent, but with the right tools, systems, and staff, you can automate a large part of your team and focus on your own transactions.
11: Build Your Revenue Share
Revenue share is a new concept that real estate companies are beginning to incorporate into their business models in order to stimulate growth for both agents and the company. For real estate agents, Revenue share is where a brokerage shares its earnings with their agents for introducing agents into the company. Generally, revenue share is paid from the brokerage to the agents based on the gross commission income or GCI earned by agents you introduce to the company. For agents to start participating in revenue share, the first thing they must do is find a brokerage that offers this business model.
There are lots of ways to grow your revenue share. Many agents have found success by connecting with their existing network of real estate agents in their market and showing them the benefits of their broker. But you don’t have to just stick to one method, other agents have leveraged social media, online forums, video, and other creative ideas to expand their network of agents and grow their revenue share.
12: Get Paid for Open Houses
You can offer to host open houses for other agents. This is fantastic for new agents because you can either get all of the buyer leads that walk through the door for yourself or get paid a few hundred bucks, or both!
You can either ask your company mentor or any agents in your existing sphere to do their open houses for a negotiable fee or join a program where you can get paid to do multiple open houses for any interested agents in your local market.
13: Get Paid for Writing Contracts
Some agents are so busy that they just need someone to write and manage their contracts and paperwork. I know agents who are also new parents, making going to properties tough – so they write contracts for other agents at $100 per!
This is a great way to keep your agent skills sharp while on a busy schedule and make some money in the process. There are also plenty of referral programs out there that agents can participate in if they find this to be something that they are especially good at.
14: Sell Your Teachable Skills
If you’re great at content creation, graphic design, video editing, search engine optimization, lead generation, CRM management, or other agent-centric skills, you can teach other agents for a fee or create a class you can sell over and over! This can be done on YouTube for free as a way to grow your channel or you can teach live classes to a small group of agents a few times a month.
The best ways to scale this side hustle into a reliable source of side income is to create pre-recorded courses and sell them on online platforms such as Udemy. That way you only have to teach the material once and can sell your course over and over again while you focus on your sales as a real estate agent.
15: Take Listing Photos and Videos
Have a decent camera? Interested in photography? Why not take a course and then offer to take listing photos to other agents in your area for a few hundred per visit? As an agent, you have a competitive advantage over other photographers because you know exactly what parts of the property to highlight and what buyers might find appealing. Plus, you can save a lot of money on your own listings by taking listing photos or videos yourself.
More Sweet Side Hustles for Real Estate Agents
16: Send Clients to Referral Agents
So you do know that if you know someone moving literally anywhere in the US, you can find them an agent and then work out a split with that agent? Typically the agent doing the referring keeps 25% of the proceeds of the sale. So if you know Joe on Facebook is moving to Montana (from wherever), just hop on your national brokerage network of agents and find the perfect buyer’s agent for them to work with in Montana and keep 25% of the commission!
Oh you say your brokerage doesn’t have a network of 30,000+ agents across the USA to connect with and trade referrals with? Time to consider a better model!
17: Drive for Uber or Lyft
You already know the area. You will absolutely find new clients by driving them around and you may notice properties or homeowners that might be looking to sell a property! Got an early morning and a late afternoon showing? Why not make some money in between! This can be the perfect symbiotic mutually beneficial side hustle for real estate agents.
18: Participate in Broker Partner Programs
Some brokers have partner programs, like partner title, lender, home warranty, or other companies. Now it usually isn’t permitted for agents to get some sort of cash kickback, but there are other creative ways to be rewarded for using partner companies. One example is earning shares in that company!
Another example is a program like eXp Realty‘s Express Offers – which is an iBuyer program unlike any other. Agents can bring cash offers to sellers from a marketplace of institutional investors. There are lots of ways clients and agents benefits from this program. One interesting one is that if you bring an investor company to the program, you get to net $800 cash for EVERY home that they buy. That could be $800 a year or $800 a week!
19) Do Projects on Fiverr or Freelancer
We talked about selling your teachable skills earlier. But what if you aren’t as good at explaining things yet? You can still monetize those special niche skills you have by starting a page on fiverr or upwork and charging clients a small fee to do some simple projects. These can range from graphic design to copywriting to video editing. And if your broker has a network of agents around the country, you can even advertise your skills to your colleagues! Check out Fiverr.com and Freelancer.com.
20) House Sitting
House sitting is the perfect side hustle for real estate agents who want to take up property management. On top of that, people will be delighted to know that their house sitter is a real estate agent. Think about it, who can take care of your house better than someone who does it for a living! Duties might include light cleaning or yard work, watering plants, picking up the mail, and simply “holding down the fort.” Things that a lot of agents already do for their seller or landlord clients.
You can easily find house sitting jobs in online marketplaces or simply through networking with neighbors and your general sphere.
Make even MORE Moolah!
We just went over the 20 best side hustles for real estate agents. There’s plenty of opportunity out there, especially for industry specialists like real estate agents, to make an extra stream of income. So what are you waiting for! Start your side hustle today and rack in some extra cash!
While side hustles are great and often times necessary for true wealth building, you should also do your best to maximize your commission income!
Learn More About eXp Realty & Our Free Partnership Team!
If you are interested in joining the best brokerage for agent growth, compensation, and opportunity in the world, be sure to partner with the best sponsorship team in the world as well! We provide additional training, tools, coaching, partners, collaboration, masterminds, and resources for your success!
We believe in massive growth and financial freedom for all real estate agents! Live your dream real estate lifestyle with us.
For more eXp Realty details, check out our comprehensive About eXp Realty – Everything You Need to Know article.