GMAC Real Estate is closing 15 offices in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and laying off staff as home selling and shopping increasingly migrate to the Internet amid a housing slump.
The Minneapolis company said yesterday it would lay off about 50 managers and support staff during the consolidation in New England. By Dec. 31, real estate agents in the affected offices will be relocated to GMAC's remaining 35 offices in the two states.
"We certainly hope they will be willing to work out of one of our other offices. We anticipate most will," said GMAC spokesman Brett Weinberg.
He said the contraction was due more to the growth of the online housing marketplace and other technology changes than to the state's housing slump. Buyers, for example, have become less reliant on real estate brokers as the Internet has made it easier for them to look for houses on their own.
"Agents and consumers have access to tools they have online" that are similar to what's available inside an office, Weinberg said.
Still, the worst real estate market in a decade has thinned the ranks of Massachusetts real estate brokers: There are 23,252 agents statewide, nearly 5 percent fewer than last year, according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors. Statewide, single-family home sales plunged 17 percent in October, the association reported last month.
Most of the industry's contraction appears to be outside Greater Boston. Inside Route 495, single-family sales were 10.2 percent higher than a year ago, the Greater Boston Association of Realtors said.
John Dulczewski, executive director, said his group's membership - nearly 6,000 - is at a record high.
"2005 and 2006 changed everybody's sense of what was a strong market," he said. But this year's sales are on track to match 2003 for houses and 2004 for condos, which "were considered very good years in the housing market locally."
Massachusetts GMAC offices closing are: Agawam, Chelmsford, Danvers, Holyoke, Lynn, Marlborough, Milford, Palmer, Swampscott, and Westfield. In New Hampshire, offices in Amherst, Belmont, Concord, Exeter, and Londonderry are being closed.
Kimberly Blanton can be reached at blanton@globe.com.
(Correction: Because of a designer's error, a sign from the Bowes GMAC Real Estate agency in Arlington and broker Steve McKenna was mistakenly used to illustrate a story in Saturday's Business section on GMAC Real Estate of Minneapolis closing some local offices. Bowes is not closing and is unaffiliated with the company that is closing the offices.)
