re: Thoughts on real estate as a profession

You need to have a couple of years of living expenses. A couple of the top residential agents in New Orleans literally made $0 their first year.

Also, as someone already noted, commercial real estate and residential real estate are two different animals. The former is dominated by men, the latter by women. An attractive female agent will get much higher offers from a house from a male buyer and slightly higher offers from a female buyer. A male agent can look like Brad Pitt and it has no effect on the offers. (There have actually been studies showing this.)