The road to real estate
Real estate is easy…just work 20 hours a week and you’ll make millions! Seriously. Just make sure to hit up your mother’s sister’s cousin’s best friends and you have it made. You see those houses on the lake? You can HAVE one of those, just sell real estate. The road to real estate is easy money…
During the real estate boom, everyone’s brother’s uncle’s father got their real estate license. Friends were pitted against each other since EVERYONE knew at least 50 people that were real estate agents. The National Association of Realtors grew at an unprecedented rate as people did real estate “on the side.”
The road to real estate came to a screeching halt. The housing decline has had a huge impact not only on real estate, but on the jobs associated with real estate such as home inspectors, appraisers, mortgage brokers, construction workers, and title company employees. I have gotten numerous emails from contractors entering the pest and dry rot repair business for real estate transactions. With builders laying off subs left and right, there aren’t a lot of places for them to turn. The lost jobs have been substantial.
Sometimes I feel like I’m driving down the street and seeing road kill everywhere. Oh honey look, there’s another carpenter, mortgage broker, escrow officer, brokerage AKA carcass.
Real estate agents aren’t any different.
It’s been no secret that real estate agents are leaving real estate to delve back into the other realm of work. I hadn’t really thought about it too much, but last month, I noticed on our WVMLS statistics that the number of members which was a 2,194 in 2007, had dropped to 2,131 in April. As the new stats came out for May, the number of agents dropped again to 2,117. That’s a 3.5% drop in membership since the start of the year.
7 offices have closed as well.
I would expect this percentage to continue to increase as the year goes on as agents choose not to renew their licenses. With 2484 homes sold to date in the WVMLS area that leaves each agent with 1.2 sales. Now some agents have had more than their allotted 1.2, myself included, which means that there are many agents that have had no income so far this year.
But if we assume that all is equal…
With the average homes price now at $237, 939 and the average commission income at 5.06% (assume a 50/50 split) that means the average agent has earned $7146 so far this year or $1429 per month. That puts the average agent at the whopping salary of $17,148 or $8.57 per hour (40 hour work week, 50 weeks a year).
I haven’t looked lately, but I think the average agent could make more money driving a school bus. I wonder how much a limo drives make…I mean if I’m going to look at road kill all day, at least I can ride in style.
Related posts:
Recent Comments