Realtors Bailing Out?

I just read a Christian Science Monitor article that said that the slump in the real estate market is forcing many realtors out of the business.

The evidence was mostly anecdotal , with very few actual statistics to back up this theory of mass exodus. The only actual figure I saw was that Oregon Association of Realtors reports an 11% drop in their membership over the past year. Aside from that, it was a lot of talk about "experts" who say that realtors are leaving the business in droves.

It's not particularly surprising, and not a particularly bad thing, as far as I'm concerned.

When the market is hot, everybody decides they want to sell real estate. Well, not everybody, literally, but a lot of people. It looks like easy money, and people want a piece of that. So the rolls of the licensees are clogged with agent "speculators" looking to make a fast buck somehow.

But then the going gets a little rougher. And guess what happens? The Johnny-Come-Lately's bail out. They were never serious about real estate as a career they might have to work at. They wanted the money to be easy.

Quite frankly, I prefer to work in a market that's a little more challenging. It cleans up the industry. The agents who jumped into hot markets looking to make a quick buck are generally not good agents, and they're generally not a lot of fun to work with. Their incompetence contaminates any transaction they touch. A good agent knows how to make a "go" out of any market. And in a rough market I'm a lot more likely to look across the closing table at a strong, capable real estate professional.

I like that.

The market in Denver is not "hot" by any means, but it's not free-falling, either. It's flat. And that hasn't hurt me yet. My business has grown every year since I started, and I don't expect this year to be any different. Sure, I have to work a little harder. But I don't mind that at all. It hones my skills. It helps me to grow as an agent and find more and better ways to serve my clients.

So I'm not going anywhere.