Regional Spotlight: Pittsburgh Real Estate Agents Holding Steady

RISMEDIA, Oct. 9, 2007-(MCT)-The area’s relatively stable housing market is keeping real estate agents employed.

In some formerly red-hot markets in the United States, the number of agents has started to decline.

But so far, it’s a different story in the 17-county region served by West Penn Multi-List Inc., the area’s primary home listing service, said George Hackett, its president.

Figures show there were 6,992 agents here at the end of August, up 194 from a year ago.

“Clearly, our local Realtors must feel the market is there to support their efforts,” said Hackett, who also is president of Coldwell Banker Real Estate in Pittsburgh. “Real estate has long proven to be a wonderful career, but favorable market conditions make it an even better one.”

Hackett cited a recent report by Inman Real Estate News of agent declines in Fort Myers-Cape Coral and Palm Beach County in Florida and in the entire state of California.

Even so, overall membership in the National Association of Realtors was up about 12,000 to 1.369 million through the end of August, and that was on top of a record 1.357 million at year-end 2006.

In light of declining national home sales, such an increase “seems counter-intuitive,” said NAR spokesman Walter Molony. “But it appears that a lot of our membership growth is from real estate licensees who were not Realtors previously who decided to join because of available professional benefits such as continuing education, networking and so on.”

Molony said the trade group’s membership probably accounts for about half the licensed agents in the U.S. The median income for members was about $47,000 at year-end 2006, he said.

In this region, there are several boards of Realtors affiliated with the NAR, including the Realtors Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh, the largest group. Its membership was 3,076 agents at year-end 2006.

“I expect there will be some decline in that number this year with the real estate market being off a little bit right now,” said Anthony Cimino, president.

Based on preliminary numbers, the association expects the number to fall to 2,700 to 2,800 agents, but that’s not unusual since membership has hovered on either side of 3,000 for most of the past decade.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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