Too Many Agents in Atlanta! Do the Math!
I just finished doing a Blog post on the falling home sales in Atlanta metro area. The numbers were not good. The numbers were those that we used to see in the late 1990's. That was a different day and time for the Atlanta real estate market. Atlanta was growing, slowly but surely we were going places. Back then, we made OK money, the competition was fierce, and you knew the agents that you were up against. They were very good, dedicated and could also get the job done. They were professionals, and seasoned agents each doing over 40-50 transaction sides a year. Back then it was also difficult to raise the bar for income earned for a real estate agent! We had about 8500 agents in our FMLS back then, and we sold about +/- 2200 single family homes a month!
Today we have 31564 agentsstill showing active in GAMLS as of this post, and yet January's sales numbers showed only 2220 home sales for single family detached homes. That is the same number of sales we were doing back in 1998! The math does not work any longer. At a quick glance, we have 23,046 agents too many.
You also must consider back then, we were not dealing with foreclosures, discounting or flat fee listings did not exist. That meant that agents took home a larger portion of the pie, and could live off their earnings. Now lets divide the pie into thousands of more pieces! The math cannot work. Many brokers, and agents will have to leave this business before it becomes viable to work real estate as a career. There is not enough business to sustain all. You cannot sugar coat this with sweet nothings and optimism. It is a fact based in numbers and statistics of past sales. The problem goes further than the number of agents and sales. The collateral damage is without experienced agents, sales do not occur. There is mare fraud as agents try to beat the system, and in the end, everyone loses. The Atlanta real estate market becomes dysfunctional on steroids, because the voices of experienced agents are drowned out by the shear numbers of agents that have never even sold one home, but they are advising the seller on price and marketing. Something has to give.
***Before someone says, they are not all active, these are agents active in the GAMLS system which pretty much mirrors our FMLS system. Their dues are paid, and by the way, not everyone was active in the late 1990's either.
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