Interest in real estate careers on the rise

More people are securing careers in real estate as the housing market shows signs of stabilizing.

Membership is on the rise in McHenry County's Heartland Realtor Organization as well as the Illinois Association of Realtors.

"A couple of years ago, we saw no activity," said Jim Haisler, chief executive officer for the Heartland Realtor Organization. "But currently, that is starting to come around. In just the last 12 months, we've added a couple dozen realtors to our ranks."

In all, the organization now has just under 700 members, compared to about 1,060 at its peak in May 2007. Haisler said the steady additions, which he attributes in part to increasing housing transactions, is a positive sign that people are starting to come back into the industry.

The picture of just how many are making the move to real estate is muddled in Illinois. This year, a licensing change required anyone in real estate sales to be relicensed as a broker. Brokers had the option to relicense as managing brokers.

The requirement was enough for some scarcely active Realtors to opt to not renew their licenses, a fact that has overall driven down Heartland Realtors Organization membership by about 3 percent during the last year.

That's on par with the rest of the state, where there's been a drop-off in real estate licenses granted this year. Declining licenses are natural in a renewal year like this one, said Susan Hofer, who handles the licensing for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

And though some are in effect cutting their last remaining ties with a job in real estate by not updating their license, more and more people are once again seeing the industry as viable.

The Illinois Association of Realtors is gaining between 100 and 150 members a month, Director of Communications Jon Broadbooks said.

"It's a phenomenon we've really seen from the first quarter of this year," he said.

Like Haisler, Broadbooks connects that growth with the positive signs in the housing market this year, referencing a number in a recent Illinois Association of Realtors report that shows year-over-year home sales were up for the 14th straight month in August.

"There's no mistaking the fact that several years of a pretty brutal economy had the effect of causing a lot of people to leave the business," he said. "The good thing is that because we're starting to see the economy turn around and specifically the housing department, IAR is picking up."

Locally, more people are enrolling in classes or taking internet pre-licensing courses.

Gail Plunkett, managing broker of Coldwell Banker Honig-Bell in Crystal Lake, said she's seeing a "steady stream of people who are going for pre-licensing now."

Coldwell Banker helps people get started on their 75 hours of online licensing course work, and then places students to complete their required 15 hours of interactive training.

Kris Brown, a real estate veteran and instructor of the pre-licensing course offered at McHenry County College, said there's been a sharp decline in attendance in her course in the last four or five years, brought on both by a struggling economy and the insurgence of internet-based pre-licensing courses.

But this year, her class is back up to 12 members from six last year.

Brown still urges people to consider a job as a Realtor. She said it's a great job with flexible hours. And she thinks getting into the industry when the market isn't booming is a learning experience that can improve a Realtor's skill right off the bat.

"You can always make money in real estate," she said. "In some cases, you just have to work harder than others."

Jackie Benson of Crystal Lake decided the time was right earlier this year. A mother of three, Benson needed a job with flexible hours. She'd been keeping an eye on the real estate market throughout the recession.

"I had seen that it was at least flattening out," she said. "I thought this has got to be the best time to get into this. Hopefully it's going to improve and keeping going up."

Since getting her license in late July, Benson is spending three or four days a week at the Coldwell Banker Honig-Bell location in addition to working from home.

"It is competitive, and it's hard to break into the job. There's a lot of networking to get into the job in order to get leads and things," she said. "It's a very competitive market, but you do what you can and you just keep plugging away at it."