Key Highlights
- New report from National Association of REALTORS® indicated its total membership up +1.9% compared to last year
- Currently 1,409,727 total members at end of July
We all have experienced the COVID pandemic’s huge ups and downs. Within the world of real estate, AgentAdvice tells us that April’s pandemic shut down orders across the country saw the number of newly licensed agents fall to nearly zero. Then, spring became summer and with summer came record-breaking home sales…whoosh. With those sales, by the end of July, membership of licensed agents in the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) grew to 1,409,727, an increase of +1.9% y/y.
Pandemic layoffs, reduced hours and incomes, and forced retirements appear to be some of the main reasons people considered switching to real estate. Also, the summer’s strong housing market may have tipped the scales for people looking to have more career autonomy than their pre-pandemic jobs.
Jodi Martinez, a real estate agent with Century 21 Select in Sacramento, said, “What I’m finding is that people don’t want to be necessarily tied to a job that determines their livelihood or their future…many people love the flexibility of real estate as well as the probability of creating and being responsible for their own income stream.”
Matt Green, Director of Growth with Keller Williams, agrees. Green has been seeing some 3,000 to 3,500 newly licensed agents per month join KW over the past few months. Green said, “I think that we are seeing an influx of agents that are very intentional about their interest in really controlling their own destiny.”
Advice to these newbie agents? Green said to not allow your mindset to limit what you can do. “There’s a lot of fun and creative things that you can do to drive business you way and set yourself apart…”
In other words, consider what makes you special as an agent …and develop that uniqueness to the max.
Thanks to the National Association of REALTORS®, AgentAdvice and HousingWire.
