TRADE GROUP Realtors tell some the party is over

The practices of a few are spoiling it for the many.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
CHICAGO -- It's not every day when a trade association suggests that some of its dues-paying members ought to go away.
That's what the Minnesota Association of Realtors recently suggested in a monthly report to its members: Times are getting tougher, business is getting leaner, and the wannabes could be ruining it for the rest of us.
It's time for many, as the commentary put it, to think about a "career adjustment."
With the chilling of the market, "we have too many agents chasing too few sales," wrote Christopher Galler, senior vice president for public affairs for the trade group. Galler said his group's statistics indicate that about 50 percent of its 24,000 members have fewer than two transactions a year.
That's not necessarily bad in a business that traditionally has opened its arms to part-timers, Galler said in an interview. But the booming ranks within the industry also include a significant number who had full-time jobs and were inspired by the real estate boom to sell houses on the side.
It's not OK
"They're figuring they can learn [the real estate business] on the fly," he said. "They're figuring, 'As long as I am one step ahead of consumers in the game, I'll be OK.'"
But it's turning out not to be OK, he said. The result is a "whole slew of petty, sloppy business practices" -- missed appointments, unreturned phone calls, mishandled sales contracts and worse -- that sour the punch bowl for the rest of the industry, Galler said.
Real estate would appear to need a pretty large punch bowl in order to keep the party going. Galler said membership in the Minnesota realty association has doubled in the past decade, growth that parallels that of its parent, the National Association of Realtors. NAR, which estimates that it represents about half of all people in the industry, has almost doubled in size, to nearly 1.4 million, during the same period. Illinois Association of Realtors membership went from 38,000 to 64,000 in the past decade.
Of course, with each of those memberships comes an annual membership check -- that is, the trade association's operating revenues -- and I wondered if, with its "maybe you don't belong here" advice to some members, the Minnesota group would be accused of eating its young.
Positive response
"The reaction [from MAR membership] has been overwhelmingly positive," Galler said. "We got about 100 e-mail responses, and most of them were in agreement and offered suggestions about how to improve professionalism."
Most of the suggestions involved tougher entry standards such as more rigorous license testing, more hours of education or requiring apprenticeship until an agent has a certain amount of experience, he said.
But those changes would affect future agents, not those already licensed. Galler said the problem, instead, lies with those who are already practicing. In a subsequent commentary, he suggested that brokers -- the corporate sponsors of their agents -- need to work harder at supervising them.
Galler's commentary is tough-love advice in an industry that's notoriously smiley-faced about itself and usually oblivious to negative public perceptions of the profession, deserved or not.