What New Real Estate Agents Should Look for in Their First Brokerage

Your first goal isn't income

Your first goal is competence, because income follows it and never precedes it. A newly licensed agent's real risk isn't a bad split — it's spending eighteen months without enough reps, feedback, or structure to become genuinely good, then leaving the business convinced it doesn't work.

So evaluate first brokerages on one criterion above all others: which office will make you competent fastest? Everything else is secondary for the first two years.

What to evaluate

• Scheduled training, not a library. Recorded content is a resource, not a program. You want classes on a calendar, ideally in person, with people who will notice whether you attended.
• A manager who knows your numbers. If the manager can't tell you how many conversations you should be having weekly, they aren't going to help you have them.
• Mentorship or partnership. A path to real transactions with an experienced agent — a mentor program, team opportunity, or listing partnership — shortens your learning curve by a year.
• Contract and compliance education. Purchase agreements, disclosures, and timelines are where new agents get hurt. Ask specifically what training exists here and who you call at 8pm when something breaks.
• Live opportunity. Open houses, floor time, and open listing inventory to practice on. You need at-bats, not theory.
• Culture you'd want to be around daily. Sit in the office for an hour before you decide. You'll learn more from that than from the presentation.

How to tell real training from a calendar

Ask three questions. Who teaches it — a producing agent, a manager who still coaches, or a vendor? What happens after the class — is there role-play, feedback, or accountability, or does it end when the session ends? And what did the last new agent who went through it actually accomplish in their first ninety days?

Real training changes behavior. A class you attend and forget is entertainment. Look for role-play specifically: nobody enjoys it, and it is the single highest-return activity available to a new agent. Offices that do it are serious.

Understanding cost as a new agent

Splits matter less than you think at the start, because a favorable split on very few transactions is worth almost nothing. What matters is your monthly fixed cost — desk fees, technology fees, association and MLS dues, marketing — because that's your runway burn while you're building.

Ask for a written all-in monthly cost and a per-transaction cost. Then ask what's broker-paid. A brokerage that covers your CRM, your website, and your design tools has effectively raised your split, and it removes decisions you're not yet equipped to make.

Tradeoffs to be honest about

High-split cloud brokerages are a poor first home for most new agents. The economics look great and the structure is usually absent, and structure is the entire product you need right now. Large full-service offices offer training and supervision at a lower split. Teams offer the fastest skill development and lead flow, at the cost of a smaller share and less autonomy — which is often a good trade for year one.

There is no shame in choosing a smaller share of more deals while you learn. The agents who struggle most are usually the ones who optimized their split before they had a business.

Where First Team and Jacob fit

First Team provides structured company training, broker-paid technology, and marketing infrastructure. In the Mission Viejo and San Clemente offices, Jacob Lawlor runs onboarding personally, sets a written 90-day plan, meets one on one, and connects newer agents with experienced agents who need leverage — which is how a new agent gets real reps instead of theoretical ones.

Newly licensed agents can also start at new.jacoblawlor.com, which is built specifically for new-agent development.

Next, read what First Team training and coaching actually includes and how to build a 90-day pipeline — the pipeline math works the same whether you're at $0 or $15M.