Veteran real estate broker Deanne Esses, who plies her trade as a senior vice president at one of the city's biggest firms, Bellmarc Realty, said eight people in her Upper East Side office on Madison Avenue are leaving their jobs for alternative careers. Those eight represent 20% of the office's sales staff of 40.Now read about the newbie real estate agent who quickly went from almost 200K a year to flipping sandwiches in Queens. Wow!
That's only the beginning. Ms. Esses said she thinks more New York City brokers will be leaving the scene. "Business here is just not quiet; it has dropped dead over the past few weeks," she said. "At the same time, there's a flood of inventory on the market. We run open houses, we run advertisements, but nothing works. There are no buyers, and without buyers, there are no sales."
Now as the market continues to decline there will be many more people leaving the housing industry for other prospects. The bubble was unsustainable and the wreckage will leave the US economy in a state of recession in 2007.Early in 2004, Mark Clemente left his uncle's dry-cleaning plant in Detroit to go east and, hopefully, make his fortune in real estate. Shortly thereafter, he became a broker at E&G Realty, a small firm in Newark, N.J., where he earned a respectable $195,000 in his first year.
But it has been downhill ever since. The housing slump and fierce brokerage competition led to the demise of E&G. Mr. Clemente's income collapsed, and over the past six months he has held a number of part-time jobs, including one making sandwiches at a Queens delicatessen that paid him $100 a week. "I'm going home; my real estate career is over," he said the other day.
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