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The right team offers support, structure and mentorship. The wrong one can set you back. by Josh Ries Today, June 23, 2026 originally posted on Inman Website When the market slows down, joining a real estate team can start to feel like the obvious answer. Leads are harder to come by. Buyers are cautious. Sellers are harder to price. Deals take longer. Then an agent looks around and thinks, “Maybe I just need to join a team, and everything will get easier.“ Sometimes that is the right move. But sometimes it is just a panic decision dressed up as a business strategy. Joining a team can be a great way to get support, structure, mentorship and more opportunities. It can also be a great way to lose time, give up margin and tie your business to someone else’s goals without realizing it until you are already deep in their systems. 5 questions to ask before joining a real estate team Before you join a real estate team, ask these five questions. 1. What are my long-term goals in real estate? Before you ask the team leader anything, ask yourself this first: What do I actually want my real estate business to look like in five years? If your goal is to become a strong solo agent, the team you join should help you build skills, systems and confidence that eventually allow you to stand on your own. If your goal is to start your own team someday, look for a team where you can learn leadership, operations, lead generation and business math from the inside. But if your goal is to stay on a team long term and focus mainly on sales, that is a different decision. You may want strong support, consistent lead flow, clear accountability and a structure where you can plug in and perform. None of these goals are wrong. The problem is joining a team before you know which one applies to you. It’s hard to choose the right team when you have not defined what you want the team to help you build.

It took me a long time to realize that the best negotiations rarely happen during the negotiation. Early in my real estate career, I thought negotiation was about having the right response at the right moment. The right script. The right comeback. The right way to push back when things got tense. Then I started noticing something. The deals that felt the easiest to negotiate were usually the ones where I had spent the most time preparing the client beforehand. The seller already understood how buyers were likely to react to pricing. The buyer already understood how appraisal gaps worked. Everyone knew the likely sticking points before they became sticking points. By the time the offer was written, there were very few surprises left. The deals that became stressful usually looked different. Somewhere along the way, a conversation got skipped. Expectations were not set. Risks were not explained. A client became emotionally attached to an outcome that was never realistic. Then the negotiation became difficult. Not because anyone was a bad negotiator. Because we were trying to solve an emotional problem that should have been addressed weeks earlier. That changed the way I think about negotiation. Today, I spend far less time thinking about how I will respond to objections and far more time thinking about what expectations need to be set before the objection ever appears. If I know an appraisal gap could become an issue, we talk about it before we write the offer. If I know inspection findings could create anxiety, we talk about it before the inspection happens. If I know a seller’s pricing expectations are unrealistic, we work through that before the home hits the market. The goal is not to win arguments. The goal is to remove surprises. I have found that when clients know what is coming, they make decisions with logic instead of emotion. Conversations become easier. Negotiations become cleaner. Deals become less stressful for everyone involved. The biggest lesson I learned is that great negotiators are usually not better at talking.