by Calculated Risk on 11/20/2005 09:32:00 PM

My weekly post on Angry Bear: Construction Employment in the Inland Empire

Added from Dr. Thoma - A funny photo: The Consumption Boom

And in a related story from Reuters: Californians gamble on career in real estate

Real estate bubble or not, more and more Californians are betting on a future in selling homes.

Realtor hopefuls are arriving every day -- a troubling trend for veterans, say economists who note that there soon will not be enough homes for sale to support all the newcomers.

Nearly 2 percent of adults in California hold a license to sell residential property in the state, where $30,000 commissions on million-dollar homes have become commonplace.
...
"Some of these agents will be flushed out" of the industry, said economist Stuart Gabriel, director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California.

"It's difficult to imagine that there will be an adequate volume of home sales" that would sustain the new arrivals, he said.

Since the beginning of 2004, statewide sales activity among existing single-family homes has risen 2 percent, according to the California Association of Realtors. But during the same period, the population of agents grew 26 percent.
...
"There's a precarious situation out there right now," he said, citing frustration among novices who find themselves regularly outfoxed by more seasoned realtors.

Rohrbach added that if sales slow even moderately, "it's going to be more and more difficult for them to be earning a living wage."