Top 15 Free Online Courses To Level Up Your Real Estate Skills

Whether you’ve just passed your real estate license exam or you’ve been mastering MLS for decades, there is always more to learn for a hard-working real estate agent. And what better way to learn than on your own time, in your own space, with these free online real estate courses?

Staying at the top of your field doesn’t have to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. In this day and age with the number of versatile and educational resources online, there are plenty of opportunities to seriously upgrade your real estate career and business without spending a dime. If you can learn how to build a house from online tutorials, you can definitely enhance your ability to sell one with a few fresh online courses.

Below we’ve combined the best resources for free online real estate courses and a few suggestions we’re sure you’ll appreciate. Keep in mind that these are resources for real estate training, they cannot be counted towards attaining a real estate license.

Without further ado, let’s jump in. 

Canva Design School

The do-it-all design and publishing platform that we all love has taken educational application to a new level with Canva Design School. Design School is found within Canva Learn, the platform’s resource for all of your web design concerns and creative inspiration.

Within this subsection, you will find detailed lessons on topics that are complemented by Canva products (such as digital and print marketing for real estate).

While the lessons and main functions of this platform are free, we recommend trying out the Premium plan for $109.99 a year. This will allow you to take advantage of all of the real estate solutions offered by Canva including brand control, locked elements, and project approval.

Canva for beginners

This is the first stop for Canva beginners. This series of short and to-the-point videos is where you’ll learn how to use all of the basic tools and functions of the platform, including how to use templates, using photos, editing elements, collaborating on designs, among others. It takes less than 30 minutes to complete and by the end you’ll have learned how to make more graphics than you can even make use of.

• Format: Video
• Time Required: 30 minutes
• Difficulty: Easy
• Ease of navigation: Great
• Sense of Community: Nonexistent
• Interactiveness: So-so

Personal Branding with Dr. Talaya Waller

As real estate professionals, you are your own brand. You are the key to making a client’s wildest home dreams come true – so take your brand seriously. In this course, Dr. Talaya Waller, a professor and author of personal brand management touches on topics such as how to take advantage of positioning and how to pitch to clients. Following each lesson, a template is provided for you to practice what you’ve learned.

• Format: Video
• Time Required: 30 minutes
• Difficulty: Easy
• Ease of navigation: Great
• Sense of Community: Nonexistent
• Interactiveness: Great

We love using Canva as a tool to help us make stellar content on our web platforms and print ads. However, building a versatile and recognizable brand takes a bit more work. At AgentFire we build clients a full branding guide and logo. This includes a logo, business card, yard sign and stationery design, social templates and more. Take a look at our client’s brands in action.

Udemy

Udemy has consistently been one of the most popular resources for free online courses in recent years. At the moment there are over 100, 000 classes available and over 40 million students. There’s a wealth of online real estate courses available on the site in a variety of languages. While some subjects are paid, there are hundreds of free courses you can choose from. You may even find informative courses to share with your clients.

Strategic Networking For Profitable Real Estate Deals

Taught by a leading real estate investing expert and wholesaler, this course will guide you through how to make the most out of your existing social circle and strategically expand your real estate network to generate leads that convert. Not sure who you need to network with and why? Unclear on how to maintain long-term relationships in the real estate industry without being a pest? Find out at your own pace in a series of simple, no-frills video lessons.

• Format: Video
• Time Required: 1 hour
• Difficulty: Intermediate
• Ease of navigation: Great
• Sense of Community: Nonexistent
• Interactiveness: Great

Better Cold Emails

If you’re ready to break out of the rut of ignored cold emails, try this course. Hank, an email growth expert, will show you how to get your cold emails in client inboxes, write killer headlines that grab attention, and general tips to capture more leads. While this course doesn’t refer to real estate explicitly, all of the tips are relevant to better connect with clients in your hyperlocal market.

• Format: Video
• Time Required: 1 hour
• Difficulty: Intermediate
• Ease of navigation: Great
• Sense of Community: Nonexistent
• Interactiveness: Nonexistent

Coursera

Coursera offers world-class real estate courses on a variety of dynamic sub-topics. Because many courses are university-level and affiliated with accredited schools, students have the opportunity to really dive into a topic and engage with it on a deeper level. Many courses are completely free, while others are available with a  seven-day free trial. The free versions of most courses will provide all of the course material, except for a completion certificate. Unlike other platforms mentioned in this list, many of Coursera’s free online courses are content-heavy and can span over weeks.

Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills

This course, developed by the University of Michigan, takes a detailed look at strategies that all realtors can put to use in their professional interactions. You’ll look at how to analyze the negotiation, psychological techniques, review contracts, and put your skills to use with practice activities. Each module contains a discussion forum where you can ask questions and interact with other students.

• Format: Text and video
• Time Required: 7-week module
• Difficulty: Challenging
• Ease of navigation: Great
• Sense of Community: Great
• Interactiveness: Great

Marketing Analytics

So you have all of your real estate marketing tools lined up and ready to go, or perhaps you’ve already started running your first PPC campaign. How can you be sure that you are getting an excellent return on your investment? How do clicks create action? This course by the University of Virginia will go over how to interpret analytics data to maximize lead generation and make smart business decisions.

• Format: Text and video
• Time Required: 4-week module
• Difficulty: Challenging
• Ease of navigation: Great
• Sense of Community: Great
• Interactiveness: Great

EDX

EDX was originally created as an accessible education solution by MIT professor, Anant Agarwal, and his Harvard associates. For the past ten years, they have provided university-level courses on a wide range of topics including real estate investing, real estate developments, and business-related topics. Courses are free with the option of a paid upgrade with added materials.

Customer Relationship Management

“Customer relationship management” may be the most used term in real estate. Are you fully informed on how to maximize your client relationships? Or do many of your leads fall off somewhere along the lead nurturing process? In this course, you’ll learn about how to implement strategies and practices that make your CRM tools work for you.

• Format: Text, audio, and video
• Time Required: 6-week module
• Difficulty: Challenging
• Ease of navigation: Great
• Sense of Community: Great
• Interactiveness: Great

Your AgentFire site seamlessly integrates with any the top performing CRM software in the industry. Our clients especially love our LionDesk and FollowUp Boss Integrations. Curious about what you’re missing out on?

Zillow Training

Known as the leading real estate marketplace in North America, it’s no surprise that Zillow has a wealth of information and real estate education to offer. Their Zillow Training platform offers information on how to better market yourself and find leads on and off of Zillow through a few targeted online real estate classes.

Cultivate a Customer-First Mindset

This simple course is an easy click-through, packed with information on turning customers into leads and working with your team to manage client relations. The course is loosely strung together with a series of main topics, sub-topics, and graphics to support the ideas. The best part is that the simple format makes it easy to skim.

• Format: Text
• Time Required: 30 minutes
• Difficulty: Easy
• Ease of navigation: Great
• Sense of Community: Great
• Interactiveness: Great

What Defines an Inactive Customer?

Similar to the course mentioned above, this training consists of subtopics that are explained clearly and are easy to apply. Take, for example, the PRE formula for nurturing inactive clients: personalized, relevant, and easy.

• Format: Text
• Time Required: 30 minutes
• Difficulty: Easy
• Ease of navigation: Great
• Sense of Community: Nonexistent
• Interactiveness: Nonexistent

Zillow Premier Agent 101

Alternatively, Zillow offers detailed information on how to best stand out on their platform and make the most out of the digital marketing tools they offer. Zillow Premier Agent, the service that allows realtors to connect with clients live by phone, is a love/hate topic for many. However, by implementing the right strategies, there are opportunities to benefit greatly.

• Format: Text and video
• Time Required: 1 hour
• Difficulty: Easy
• Ease of navigation: Great
• Sense of Community: Nonexistent
• Interactiveness: Nonexistent

AgentFire websites feature a seamless Zillow testimonial integration to easily display your hard-earned results. Testimonials can be featured on any page of your website you like with your preferences and branding. Is your website losing leads without Zillow testimonials?

Linkedin Learning

Linkedin Learning is an online educational platform without over 5000 interactive courses. As a professional platform, you can be sure that the courses are well-structured, consistent, and are led by qualified instructors. An added plus is that your started courses are saved in the same social platform that you use in your daily life. The platform offers a range of online real estate lessons and classes on related topics.

Introduction to Commercial Real Estate

In this course, real estate broker and investor, Symon He will show you how to jump-start your career in commercial real estate. The course covers basic concepts such as asset classes and the rules around leasing commercial real estate, before diving into detailed case studies with loads of examples. Of course, this is not a replacement for your commercial real estate license. But, if you’re considering adding commercial real estate to your portfolio, start here.

• Format: Video and text
• Time Required: 4.5 hours
• Difficulty: Challenging
• Ease of navigation: Great
• Sense of Community: Great
• Interactiveness: Great

Real Estate Contracts (for real estate agents and clients)

Also taught by Symon He, this course condenses tons of rich information about navigating real estate contracts into a 30 minute lesson. If you are in need of a refresher or want to get better at navigating contingencies within contracts, this course would be of use to you. This is also a great resource to share with clients so that they too can be informed about all the lingo in their contract that they may not understand.

• Format: Video and Text
• Time Required: 30 minutes
• Difficulty: Intermediate
• Ease of navigation: Great
• Sense of Community: Great
• Interactiveness: Great

Ready to upgrade your property-listings search? AgentFire sites combine Showcase IDX and Home Junction to give your clients the most accurate results and display them in a market report they can share.

Honorable Mentions

The resources below provide free real estate training in a non-traditional or unconventional course format, however they provide valuable bits of real estate education that add tons of value to your overall real estate knowledge.

AgentFire Blogs and Success Dashboard

Honestly – we have tons of great content. As the leading real estate website designers, we know a thing or two about marketing yourself using your website and other digital tools. Our AgentFire clients have access to several online tutorials directly accessible from the account dashboard to guide you through becoming successful with your new real estate website.

Sign up for our newsletter and we’ll send you our free e-book about how to use your website to generate leads. You could also check out the hundreds of real estate marketing articles on our blog.

Talks at Google

Over the years, this online symposium has featured some of the world’s most influential thinkers and creators in every subject area.

Check out this Google Talk with Gino Blefari, the chief executive officer for HSF Affiliates LLC, which operates the real estate brokerage networks of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Prudential Real Estate, and Real Living Real Estate.

Ted Talks

If you’re reading this article, there’s a high chance that you have watched or at least heard of Ted Talks. This extremely popular online symposium has taken place in nearly every major city in the world since 1984. Known as the main stage for some of the leading thinkers, professionals, and creatives of our time, there is an abundance of high-quality videos on a huge range of topics. You can find real estate videos that are applicable for agents, as well as buyers or sellers – like this one.

Tom Ferry

Known as one of the most prominent real estate coaches in the industry, Tom’s team pumps out loads of useful information through his web channels. Find out how to grow your team on his blog or watch this video of his to up your marketing strategy. The focus of his content is on expanding your real estate business through cutting and fresh real estate marketing techniques.

We worked with Tom earlier this year to develop a succinct and value-packed video series on tangible methods you can use to exponentially improve the ROI of your marketing efforts, only available to AgentFire clients. If you are serious about enhancing your real estate career, keeping your eye on Tom’s next move is in your best interest.

Ryan Serhant

Popular, funny, semi-famous, and one of the top performing realtors in America, Ryan Serhant is luxury real estate inspiration. You may have seen him on the popular show, “Million Dollar Listing”, or on his very popular personal social networks. His Youtube channel features gems that are equivalent to free luxury real estate lessons, such as this and this.

Wrapping Up…

What real estate topic do you wish you could learn, but haven’t had the opportunity to? Search the resources above and you may find a course that can get your realtor wheels turning – free of cost. There’s always knowledge to gain and something we can do to better ourselves and our business.

Take an honest look at what isn’t exactly shining in your business. No matter how slowly you progress through an online course or how much time you are able to dedicate to learning, we can all benefit from a bit more knowledge in our area of expertise.

If you’re ready to take the next step in your real estate marketing plan, take a look at our AgentFire website designs. With the huge variety of integrations and addons, you won’t need to learn how to do it all on your own.