Realtor Board Loses Members-

Association shrinks by 320 agents; Mobile roster holds steady Sunday, September 02, 2007 By KATHY JUMPERReal Estate Editor

The slump in real estate sales has weeded out the Realtor population in Baldwin County by at least 320 agents, according to the Baldwin County Association of Realtors.

"If you're not established, it's hard in this market right now," Martha Taylor, the association's executive director, said last week.

There are 1,680 members in the Baldwin group, which had a reported 2,000 members during the peak selling frenzy before Aug. 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit.

"We lost 180 members at the first of this year and we've gained about half of those back," Taylor said.

The Baldwin County association has 200 secondary or out-of-state members from around the country including members in California, Utah, Georgia and Tennessee, according to Taylor.

"Some of them join to have access to the Multiple Listing Service, and some have bought property here," she said.

The Baldwin group also has 250 affiliates that do business with Realtors, including banks, mortgage firms, appraisers and title companies.

Membership in Mobile County's Realtor group has remained steady with 1,488 Realtors and 154 affiliate members, according to Jeff Newman, executive director of the Mobile Area Association of Realtors.

"We're getting all age groups coming into the business, but primarily baby boomers retiring and starting another career and college graduates," Newman said. "It's a great cross-section of experience. Plus there's an increasing demand from the younger agents to stay on the cutting edge of technology."

There are 14,821 Realtor members in the Alabama Association of Realtors, and 1,312 affiliates, according to AAR in Montgomery. The largest association in the state is in Birmingham, where there are 4,170 members.

The National Association of Realtors said that it expects membership to decline this year for the first time in a decade. The group ended 2006 with nearly 1.4 million members, almost double the 716,000 it had in 1997, according to NAR. This year should close with 1.3 million members, a drop of more than 4 percent, the group predicted.

Local real estate instructors say they are not seeing a decline in enrollment.

"One reason may be because so many people think this job looks like it's easy," said Carolyn Norman of Norman Realty GMAC Real Estate, who teaches real estate courses. "They don't realize what's involved."

Some rookie agents plan to keep a day job and sell real estate in the evenings and on weekends, Norman said.

The estimated $2,000 in start-up costs to get into real estate are discussed up-front in the classes, according to Anne Powell, an associate broker at Roberts Brothers and administrator of the Academy of Real Estate based in Mobile. Those costs include local and state board dues, MLS fees, licensing courses and test fees, she said.