May 29 (Source: The Roanoke Times By Jenny Kincaid Boone) - Neil Conner always thought he’d be a real estate agent.He sold his first house at age 23, and he was hooked. He made real estate his livelihood, a job path that he planned to nurture for the rest of his working life.
The real estate market collapse sent his best laid career plans spinning.
In November 2007, just before home sales nose-dived nationally, Conner opened his own firm, PropertyPros, Realtors, in Salem. He hired several sales agents and settled into his new role, including a yearlong stint as president of Roanoke’s real estate professionals association and spokesman for local market conditions.
In a good year, Conner sold 45 to 50 houses. In 2008, he booked less than half that number of transactions.
“My overhead went up, my income was cut in half,” he said. “It was just the perfect storm.”
Conner closed PropertyPros in late 2008 and early the next year landed a job in sales for Renaissance Contract Lighting & Furnishings, a Roanoke manufacturing facility.
“I didn’t know what would happen,” said Conner, father of three young children. “I always thought I’d be a Realtor, and life handed me a set of circumstances that said that may not be true.”
The new gig gives him a steady paycheck, consistent hours and peace of mind.
He’s still selling houses on the side as an associate broker for The Real Estate Group in Salem. But he’s not sure when — or if — real estate will be his full-time profession again.
Conner’s story shows the toll that several years of sluggish home sales have taken on a profession jolted by the nation’s economic crisis and plummeting housing market.
Some Roanoke-area real estate agents have swapped their sales signs and business cards for new careers, while others are keeping one foot in real estate’s door while they juggle other jobs to supplement their income. They are riding on a hope that the housing market eventually will make a comeback.
To be sure, many long-time agents remain in the business full time, though more of them are going back to school to earn designations that equip them to handle distressed property sales such as foreclosures and short sales, say state and local real estate experts. Sales of foreclosed properties were 12 percent of total home sales in the Roanoke metropolitan statistical area in 2010, according to RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure tracking service.
Even so, there are fewer real estate agents in the Roanoke Valley than there were four years ago. Membership in the Roanoke Valley Association of Realtors declined 9 percent this year, to 1,210 members, from 1,330 on May 1, 2010.
Within the past 10 years, the association’s membership peaked at 1,698 in 2007, though the surge began between 2004 and 2005 when homes sold swiftly, property values rose to exorbitant levels and people flocked to the profession, with a 12 percent RVAR membership boost. The association went on to lose 12 percent of its members between 2008 and 2009, its largest yearly decline in the past decade.
To hold the title of “Realtor,” an agent pays annual dues of $430 to the RVAR, which also plugs him or her into both the Virginia and national Realtor associations. Agents also pay $35 a month to access the Multiple Listing Service.
Since 2006, at least 20 real estate agents at Coldwell Banker Townside, Realtors, in Roanoke and Blacksburg have left the business, said Bill Gearhart, principal broker. The firm has about 60 agents now, compared with 80 in 2006.
Some left for a time and have returned, while others still hold part-time jobs until the market’s pace returns. Largely those are people who became real estate agents in 2007 after the market’s bust, said Leroy Worley, an associate broker for Francis Realtors in Roanoke.
Real estate agents are independent contractors and must pay many of their own expenses, including advertising and health insurance. Some of those costs alone have forced many agents to find new or additional careers, Gearhart said.
During real estate’s robust years, Kit Hale, general manager at MKB Realtors in Roanoke County, said 15 to 20 new agents joined his firm in a year. Now, those figures are much lower.
“There aren’t that many transactions for them to sustain,” Hale said.
Home sales in the Roanoke Valley have declined each year for the past five years, with the largest decrease occurring between 2007 and 2008, when sales plummeted 20 percent. Also, so far this year, the median price of a Roanoke Valley home has dropped each month compared with 2010 prices, according to the RVAR.
Median income for real estate agents nationally has declined each year since 2007, dropping to $24,900 in 2010 from $31,000 in 2007, said Walter Molony, a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors. The number of agents who work part time increased in 2010, compared with 2009, though specific figures are not available, he said.
Brad Chase became a real estate agent just before the housing market plunged. In 2007, he left a job selling furniture to earn his real estate license and work for Francis Realtors in Roanoke. He sold a few homes before the market tanked.
Chase watched other real estate agents burn through their savings. He refused to do the same.
He took a part-time job selling cellphones at a Roanoke Ntelos store. The 31-year-old schedules appointments with home buyers in the mornings, while he pulls day and evening shifts several times a week at the wireless store. Often, he works 12 to 14 hours a day between the two jobs.
Chase said he plans to juggle his cellphone sales gig and real estate until he can rely only on income from real estate to support his wife and three children. Plus, his job at Ntelos has helped him to meet potential real estate clients.
“I sell a few houses a year,” Chase said. “Obviously that’s not enough to make a living.”
Still, the market has not flattened sales for all real estate agents.
Kay DeGiorgi, a Smith Mountain Lake-area real estate agent, began selling Silpada jewelry to supplement slow sales from real estate in 2007. But in the past year, she said her home sales have picked up so much that she’s spending less time on her jewelry business.
DeGiorgi also has earned a certified distressed property expert designation that qualifies her to help homeowners decide if their property is eligible for a short sale and avoid foreclosure.
With distressed properties, “They’re probably going to continue to be out there for a while,” she said.
Another Roanoke-area real estate agent, Marie Flippen, returned to the profession last year after she left real estate in 2008 for a job in nursing management at a nursing home. Flippen, a registered nurse before she began her real estate career, said she took the management job when the home sales market slowed substantially and she wanted stability.
But Flippen was stressed trying to sell homes part time while carrying a full-time management job. And she missed real estate.
“Definitely the market’s more sluggish than it was back in the boom,” said Flippen, who works for Coldwell Banker Townside, Realtors. “I do think things have picked up.”
Other Roanoke-area real estate agents banded together to start a new firm earlier this year, Lichtenstein Rowan, Realtors. Robert Lichtenstein, a founder and broker, said he plans to add three agents this summer to the company’s 13 so far, while expanding to a space in the upstairs floor of the firm’s building.
But Lichtenstein said he’s hiring only experienced real estate agents, because “it’s a tough time for new Realtors.”
When or if some agents will return to real estate full time is hard to predict, industry professionals say. Chase estimated that it could take another two to three years before he can make a living solely in real estate.
And though Scott Brunner, CEO of the Virginia Association of Realtors, said he’s heard anecdotal reports of some agents returning to the field, he cannot yet say that the severe reductions in the association’s membership base will reverse. VAR membership declined 5 percent in March 2010, from the same month of 2009. The association lost 27 percent of its members from its 2006 peak.
“The people who survived this downturn are absolutely survivors,” Brunner said.
Source: The Roanoke Times By Jenny Kincaid Boone
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A service of YellowBrix, Inc. Publication date: 2011-05-29
