Brokerage workforce shrinks

After losing 10 percent of its sales agents last year, the city’s brokerage workforce is on pace to shed even more people this year as fewer people get licensed and more people leave the profession. Real estate schools throughout the city have seen enrollment drop and have canceled classes for mortgage brokerage, title closing and home inspection. The president of the New York Real Estate Institute, Richard Levine, said there’s been “a good 50 percent dropoff” in students enrolling in mortgage classes. But, he said, his school’s enrollment on the whole is even because it has added new classes in other subjects like foreclosures and short sales and picked up students from other schools. In addition to Levine, The Real Deal’s Jen Benepe also talked to Jeff Wolk, the COO of Fenwick Keats Goodstein, about which brokers are leaving the industry and who is being hired. To watch the full Webcast click on the video below.