As a commercial real estate broker, your time is precious. Not many professions offer as much potential income with time and effort. In your world, you can tell yourself, “if I work twice as hard this year, I will make more money.” Not many jobs have that opportunity.
This means you need to spend as much time as possible on your business, with your clients, and canvassing for new opportunities. Less time should be spent dealing with administrative decisions. To accomplish leverage, you need a trusted team of professionals.
The first role player on your team is a financial advisor. This person should do more than investment management. They should be there to support you in better decision-making and accountability. Offering a sounding board for navigating challenges and opportunities, this person will quantify tradeoffs between decisions and offer suggestions for increasing your odds of reaching long-term goals. The financial advisor should also be the coordinator of other professionals on your team.
The next on your team is an accountant. This person will help you set proper expectations for taxes and help you develop and implement strategies for reducing or deferring taxes. Unfortunately, many accountants are primarily scorekeepers looking at last year’s numbers. As a result, they do not have the time to spend with you creating strategy and updating throughout the year as things change. This is where your financial advisor may help coordinate the follow-through on your ever-changing income expectations and the taxes that result.
A bookkeeper is very valuable for providing leverage and offloading many administrative tasks. Because most CRE brokers are independent contractors paid via 1099 and set up as an S Corp, additional obligations and due dates need to be monitored. A bookkeeper will organize your income and expenses to produce financial statements to prepare your tax returns more easily. The bookkeeper will also run payroll for your S Corp and timely file necessary Federal and State forms caused by payroll.
Finally, an attorney will establish your entity and make sure it is written and executed correctly. The attorney will also support you in future opportunities common to CRE brokers, like switching brokerage firms, analyzing employment agreements, reviewing retention bonuses, and investing in real estate.
At Moisand Fitzgerald Tamayo LLC and For CRE Brokers, we’ve already built a team of professionals to support you as a CRE broker. All are very experienced in the nuances of your career. The financial advisor and accountant are on the same team and in the same office. This reduces your time and effort coordinating between professionals. We’ve built a streamlined process for handling most of the work for you and among other professionals on the team. Spend more time making more money and not worrying about the next deadline.
