An investor does not deal with the buying and selling procedures on his own; he has a broker do them for him. This is obviously not done free of cost, a broker charges its clients for his services. A broker does not necessarily have to be an individual; there are various broker firms as well which functions collectively as a unit to handle your investment related affairs.
What does a Broker do?
Whether it is a firm or an individual, a broker has a number of responsibilities that he has to deliver.
To understand the duties of a broker, it would be helpful to imagine him as a grocery store which is visited by the shoppers who are interested in buying goods from this store which have been produced by different companies. The grocery store here would be the broker; the shoppers here will be the customers/clients who are interested in buying or selling to someone who is going to be the investor.
Other than being the middleman between the clients and the investors, a broker’s responsibility also includes to determine market values. Additionally he also has to take care of any advertisements that may have to be run to publicize properties that are on sale. When interested people contact him, a broker is the person who is going to be showing them properties to these prospective buyers.
A broker also has to have sound knowledge about selling and buying properties and other related areas because many a times, he is also going to have to advice clients about whether or not they should invest their money somewhere etc.
What do you need to be a broker?
Being a broker is no easy job. To be broker, a person needs to pass two licensing examinations, namely, Series 7 and Series 63. Both these exams are the official licensing examinations of the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). Passing these examinations is evidence enough that the person in questions knows what goes in and out of the industry that he is about to be a part of, he has sound knowledge about business, about what to sell and how to sell it.
Further Reading
- Real estate brokers view the college curriculum – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Information brokers and the use of budgetary and financial information by politicians: the case of Portugal – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Broker beauty and boon: a study of physical attractiveness and its effect on real estate brokers' income and productivity – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Assessing the costs and benefits of brokers in the mutual fund industry – academic.oup.com [PDF]
- Derivative strategies used by United States commercial banks and security brokers for foreign exchange risk management. – elibrary.ru [PDF]
- The organization of innovation brokers: An international review – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Is the compensation model for real estate brokers obsolete? – link.springer.com [PDF]
- The welfare effects of non‐price competition among real estate brokers – onlinelibrary.wiley.com [PDF]
- Brokers, Bureaucrats, and the Emergence of Financial Markets – papers.ssrn.com [PDF]
- Minimum service requirements, limited brokers and menuing of services – link.springer.com [PDF]
