February 12, 2007 12:24 PM

Hanging up their blazers
Posted by Douglas Eisenhartat 12:24 PM

Sister employment site Career Journal, from the Wall Street Journal, reports that the cooling housing market has finally had the expected impact on residential real estate brokers:

The long-awaited shakeout among real-estate agents is finally happening -- much to the relief of those who are sticking with the business and prefer a bit less competition.

When David Lereah, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, addressed the group's convention in New Orleans in November, he got one of the biggest bursts of applause by predicting there would be fewer Realtors around in a year. Mr. Lereah said in an interview that he expects membership in the trade group to decrease by about 6% to 8% from the record of nearly 1.4 million reached in 2006.

So if you were considering moving in that direction career-wise, you may want to reconsider your timing.

Read the entire article.