Small drop in realtors’ numbers
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Updated: July 09, 2009 12:17 PM
Neal Carmichael has had a rough ride since becoming a real estate agent nine months ago. “It’s been a difficult, difficult time. I mean just because the economy has been so challenging,” he said. “With hindsight being a perfect science, I would have loved to have gotten into it three years ago.”
The real estate market in Victoria dipped and dived along with the global economy, then surprised people with record sales last month. Yet through it all, the number of people lining up to become real estate agents has held relatively steady.
Anthony Cavenaugh, with the Real Estate Council of B.C., says the number of real estate licensees given out in B.C. is only slightly off from an all-time high of 20,391 last August to 19,342 as of last week.
In Greater Victoria, the number of realtors peaked at 1,368 this time last year. This year, 1,290 are trying to earn a living selling real estate, said Chris Markham, president of the Victoria Real Estate Board. “Actually we’re very surprised to see that membership has hung in. We had a bad four or five months, so some of our membership was thinking we may be down as low as 900,” he said. Markham says that the industry needs new people to take over as realtors reach retirement age.
There is no bad time to become a real estate agent, said Elton Ash, regional executive vice president of Remax in western Canada. Despite starting his career in 1981, during the worst recession in Canada since the depression, he says he quickly found his niche. “Your success is really determined by your own personal initiative, dedication and desire to succeed,” he said. However, he noted that of his class of 45, he was one of two students who hadn’t left the field within two years.
Despite a rough start, Carmichael says he made the right choice in switching careers, from an airport manager in Nunavut to an agent in B.C.’s capital region with Royal Lepage.
He has noticed a recent market turnaround.
“I’ve gone from spending weeks and weeks and hardly finding anybody to do anything, to now I almost have to unlist my cell phone number so that I can get some sleep,” Carmichael said. “It’s great that way, it’s good -- that’s what I wanted it to be like.”
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