I just looked up a search to find out how my different realty companies are in the U.S. The search turned up a shocking result, it sayed that almost ever town in the U.S. has an average of about 800 to 1,100 companies thats not counting the realtors in the actual companies. I'm intrested to know anyones opinion on this topic. Do you feel an over saturated industry is the cause of realtor struggle or do you think it's all about the bad market.

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At the height of the feeding frenzy (Oct 2006) NAR membership was about 1.3 million. As of mid February, it was 1.068 million or a drop of about 250,000 members. When it gets back into the 850 to 900 range, it will be about right

Cirino, that statistic sounds a bit overblown. Do you think there are 1,100 real estate companies in New Britain, CT? Nonetheless, when times were good many people flocked to become realtors to reap easy rewards, and when time got bad many didnt have the stomach to seek solutions. In my opinion, a weak market requires that you implement solid business principles or you will fail, whereas in a good market flaws in a business can be overlooked due high business volume (which is not necessarily reflective of good practice).

Honestly Maui I would say that in my city I would estimate there to be maybe 200-300 companies but I would estimate about 3,000-4,000 realtors in the hole Hartford County maybe even more. I highly believe that there are too many realtor slacking off not taking the job serious and giving those diehard realtors a bad name. If alot of those agents who are working this business as a side gig when they already have a primary jobs Would step aside that would help open up more leads to more agents. I think the real estate license should be upgraded to a college degree. It is just to easy to break in to this industry.

I agree, we have cleaning women, waitresses, a THERAPIST, and a chiropractor in my office. Not to mention agents with multiple pensions who never return calls on their listings.

In my area the total number of sales is down and the pretty much same number of realtors as usual - so I think it's the market

Yes I believe the 80/20 principle applies to this industry as it does many other industries: 80% of the business is done by 20% of the workforce.

Although there may be an overabundance of agents, most of them are not doing any actual business (and those are the ones complaining about how bad the market is).

80/20? Nope, I believe that it is more like 95/5.

The vast majority of real estate agents do little to no business in a given month. A shockingly high number of agents (and the same applies to REALTORS) do very little business in a YEAR. The "no business" rate among REALTORS may be lower than among NAR non-members, because state and national dues tend to flush out the low volume agents.

Yeah the low volume agents may be flushed out do to all of state and national dues. But for every agent/realtor that leaves there's 1 to take his/her place.

80/20 is very applicable to this profession. Cirino, do YOU think the market is oversaturated with agents?

I'm on defense Maui! This is the reason why I posted this thread. I wanted to see how others felt about this topic. I know how bussiness is in my area but every town changes a bit. As I said before I feel it's just too easy to become a R.E. agent. It is a good thing for those like myself who truely love this industry but I hate every time I hear about people who don't take the profession serious.
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Oh, yeh, we're oversaturated with Realtors here. I don't see that as a problem though, except for the Realtors who are on the bottom of the pile and who are not selling or listing anything. The cream always rises to the top, so good Realtors are doing fine.

But, the market is also down here.

There has been a lot of over-building of homes that are too big/too high priced for the few people who are looking for those homes & who can also afford them. We probably have more builders than not living on rice & beans at this point.

Great brokers and agents find a way to close deals in ANY MARKET.

In fact I am doing more business now than in the boom times.

People need to quit making excuses as to why something isn't happening and MAKE it happen.

I don't listen to any of this good market,bad market crap. In any market a certain kind of product is selling. Find out what that is and what will soon replace it and you will always have closings.

If you have 50 listings of junk nobody wants then you will fail.

The market always has to many licensees. In the areas I've dealt in you could eliminate the bottom 50% of all licensees and you wouldn't notice even the slightest ripple in the market place.

The bottom 50% might on a rare occasion get a pity listing or sale from a friend or relative but as for being real competition they don't exist. I did take on an agent one time because his mother was in my office.

He hadn't done anything in 4 years and on his first day I asked him how he would like to outproduce his mother. I told him just to do everything I told him to do without question and that the secret was the doing. No doing, no success. He turned into a tiger and mom was having a hard time keeping up. So I know there are some tigers in that bottom 50% but they just never seem to emerge.

Here's an example. There's a county in Central Texas, by Ft. Hood, that one out of four adults have a real estate license. Now, only a few actually practice. Also consider that appraisers are often Realtors. So you have a lot of non-practicing people counted in such statistics.