I continue to read topics and comments by agents who are concerned about the state of the current housing market. I certainly understand the concern about the economy because there is so much at stake and the media has been brutal when it comes to the real estate and mortgage industry. What surprises me is so few agents seem worried or concerned about the survival of the real estate brokerage they work for. I feel for many of the brokers in business today because they have very few people they can turn to other than their accountant or financial advisor...and many of them have honestly never before seen what we are experiencing today.
I am hearing many discussions from some top real estate brokerages who are seriously concerned about the current real estate climate. The challenge here like many markets is that during the boom times many brokerages added new agents and branch offices to their brokerages and many of these brokerages expanded, leased double or triple the office space, built bigger office complexes, they hired staff to support the larger brokerage and bought or leased new high end office technology for the larger operation. The challenge for many of these brokerages today is they need less than half the agents they had during the boom market and today they need probably half the office space and half the support staff. I view this as a very big challenge that may continue to change the climate for the agent and the brokerage even further.
Imagine if the real estate agents are feeling the financial pinch in this market...we really need to take a step back and consider what our brokers are feeling. I believe our brokers are not only feeling our pain but most of them are feeling the stress and financial pressures MUCH worse than the average agent. Today we reached the end of the September and I can only envision the brokers pounding their calculator keys looking at the final month end figures with hopes of a seeing a break even month (notice I didn't mention the word profit).
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