The Growth in Real Estate Agents

Check out the growth in real estate agents :

Finding a real-estate agent in San Diego is not difficult.

It's not hard to see why. There are now more than 470,000 licensed agents in California, up from 302,789 in October 1999.

The glut of real estate professionals in the state, combined with slowing home sales, worries Alan Gin, a professor of economics at the University of San Diego's Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate.

Gin said some of San Diego's real estate agents will doubtless lose their jobs if the local housing market continues to cool. Those who are left will find themselves diving into a rapidly evaporating pool of sales, he said, and that could have serious consequences for the local economy.

"It would hurt the economy, because so much of the activity has been related to real estate," Gin said.

If property values start falling, Gin said, that could be a double-whammy on the economy. Homeowners could see the value of their properties drop and houses selling for less money mean lower commissions for the people selling them.

Those commissions, Gin said, have been one of the major underpinnings of the local economy.

Gin pointed to a recent study conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles, that found that the national gross domestic product went up 3.3 percent in the second quarter of 2005. The study shows that 0.5 percent of that rise was due to real estate commissions.

You mean the number of agents probably will not get to 600,000 in California the next five years?