For the first time in five years, the total number of real estate licensees in California dropped slightly in December!

The total number of CA real estate licensees dropped from 549,244 in November 2007 to 548,959 in December, a 0.1 percent decline. It was the first monthly decline since March 2002.  Using the U.S. Census Bureau's population estimate for California of 36.6 million as of July 1, 2007, about 1.5 percent of California's population had a real estate license in December.

There is always a silver lining in that rain cloud, and here it is.  Many Realtors are returning to their old careers because the easy money days are gone.  Now is the time to carve out your market share.  When the market was booming and houses were appreciating faster than a rocket, it wasn't so easy to build a solid relationship with buyers or sellers.  Sometimes I felt more like an order taker than a real estate professional.  This is certainly not the case now.  If you're in the real estate business long term, this is the time to make a name for yourself and to build a good solid client base.  If you take the time to do this you'll be reaping the rewards for years. 

Our business has changed from everybody and their brother selling real estate for the quick buck to the serious real estate agent only.  If you obtained your license in the last five years, your real estate experience has not been ordinary in any way.  What you just experienced was an anomaly that probably won't be repeated for a very long time.  Double digit appreciation can not be sustained forever and lenders have been burned badly with their lax lending policies.  It will be quite sometime, if ever before lenders loosen their requirements to the 2000/2006 loan programs that gave money to anyone who could fog a mirror. 

I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but this market is where you can make or break your career.  Seller's need a real estate agent with great marketing skills and excellent market knowledge.  Your ability to take a listing at the correct price and to creatively market it will gain you the respect for long term referrals.  Seller's used to brag about how much they made when selling their house, now they brag about how long it took their Broker to sell the house and what she did to market the home.

I went to a party at one of my clients homes the other night.  Her and her husband built a gorgeous new home,  I currently have their old home listed.  She was so excited to introduce me to her friends and say "This is my Broker, you should see what she's doing to market my home!"  Just two years ago, I wouldn't have even been invited to this party, she would have been bragging about how much she made on the home that she sold not the job I was doing.

For those of us that have a growing inventory of listings, it's an opportunity.  I know, it's tough, with slow sales, it means slow income and somehow those bills just keep coming at the same speed.  Believe me, I get that.  But you have to look past all of that and seize this time to get your sellers on your team.  You have the opportunity to really shine and do a great job.  This is the time to gain respect and to make a client for life.  These are the seller's that will talk about you.  In that old booming market, the talk was about how much they made on the sale, not the Broker.

Open, honest and constant communication is the only way to keep the relationship good.  It's an emotional issue with sellers and we need to understand that.  Many are in tough situations, but as a professional it's important to get that market data and put it in an easy, concise form so that your seller's understand their market.  It takes patience and great listening skills, but this our job.  We are the experts, and we need to provide this information consistently.  Ignoring market data will not make the problem go away and avoiding your seller phone calls is listing death.

Only the strong will survive this real estate market, but the smart and creative, we will thrive!