Economists' Outlook

Housing stats and analysis from NAR's research experts.

The Road to Becoming a REALTOR®

With so many new entrants into the real estate field in 2015, our research analysts pondered where they all came from. We saw in a previous article An Influx of Young Members to the REALTOR® Family that NAR membership was growing. According to the 2016 Member Profile, members with less than one year experience in the industry jumped to 20 percent in 2016 up from 11 percent the year before. In addition, more new entrants were young in age. Five percent of members were under 30 years old, up from two percent in the previous year. To better understand our membership, we dug into the data to see what industries members came from before entering real estate.

For all members, the general trends are that 16 percent came from management/business/finance, 16 percent came from sales/retail, and real estate was their first career for four percent. Once we segmented the data by gender, age, and education. Across all segments, we found that members predominantly came from management/business/finance and sales/retail. But in smaller numbers, members came from other interesting career fields.

previous careers

 

When we segmented the data by gender, slightly more males than females came from management/business/finance as well as sales/retail. Thirteen percent of women came from office/administration support compared to only two percent of men. Seven percent of men came from construction and five percent said real estate was their first career. Eight percent of women came from education, seven percent from healthcare, and seven percent were homemakers.

men and women

 

Next we segmented by age. For members under 30 years, nine percent from office administration, nine percent said real estate was their first career, and eight percent came from education. The younger the age, the more likely it is that real estate is a member's first career. As age increases, the likelihood that a member came from management/business/finance also increases. The opposite is true for the sales and retail field; as age increase, the likelihood that a member came from sales and retail decreases.

Last, we segmented by education. The trends were fairly the same as for all members; however there were a few outliers. For those with only some high school education, 16 percent came from personal care services and 10 percent came from the transportation sector. For those who have some graduate work or more, NAR members came from education. For those with a doctoral degree, 28 percent came from education, 16 percent from the legal field, and 15 percent from healthcare.

education

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