Real estate employment -- and more especially membership in Realtor associations -- fluctuates with the housing industry's ebbs and flows, said Delores Conway, director of the Casden Forecast at the University of Southern California's Lusk Center for Real Estate.
When times get tough, Conway said, some keep their state real estate licenses, hoping to return to the field later without retaking a licensing test, but relinquish their Realtor memberships.
In the early 1980s recession, which was disastrous for the nation's housing market, U.S. nonfarm employment declined 1.77 percent, and National Association of Realtors membership dropped 11.2 percent.
Realtors may be in for another winnowing whenever the current boom subsides, veteran real estate agents said. When rising interest rates for 30-year mortgages slow the market, as economists expect, it will be tougher for agents to make a living.
For now, Brian Allen, co-owner of Portland's Windermere/Cronin & Caplan Realty Group Inc., said some new agents exude the irrepressible optimism of novice investors in the dot-com era: They know only good times.
"They don't know a bad market," he said. "So it will be interesting to see what happens when they do."
New generation
For years, many new agents Carolyn Green hired intended to take on real estate part time to round out their family's income. Because most agents are paid by sales commissions, many newcomers counted on spouses for stable income, said Green, manager at the REMAX Equity Group Inc. branch in the West Hills.
So Green was surprised to see Wiren come into her office looking for a job, she said.
"Someone with two children under 5 years old typically would not get into real estate," she said.
Many in the new generation view themselves as moving into real estate for the long haul, Green said. They work hard, she said, but not necessarily longer hours.
Wiren, for example, said he limits his work to about 50 hours a week and tells his clients that he cannot be reached from 5 to 7 p.m. -- his family's dinnertime.
He also takes Sunday mornings off to attend St. Francis Church in Sherwood.
"I've received nothing but positive feedback from my clients," said Wiren, whose wife is pregnant with their third child. "All of them have been very understanding of my need for family time."
Other new agents enjoy the flexibility real estate offers but use long hours to build a pool of clients and make up for their inexperience.
New agent David Policar, 36, downsized his life to go into real estate last year. Policar had spent eight years in sales at the Oregon City offices of Celestica, a Canadian high-tech giant.
In part because he has no family, Policar said, he could cut back on costs to prepare for the career change. He moved from a Pearl District condominium to one in Multnomah Village, taking a roommate to further trim expenses.
Policar, of Windermere/Cronin & Caplan, has found success: Since January, he's brokered about 15 home sales totaling about $3.3 million.
But Policar said he hasn't quite figured out how to balance his new work life. He hasn't seen the inside of a gym in months. And, he usually does at least a few hours' work every day of the week, pausing every week or so to take in a movie with a child he mentors through Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Metropolitan Portland.
On the other hand, he recently took off a weekday afternoon for a long chat with a friend visiting from out of state -- time he could not have taken at his old job.
Still, he said, he's not sure how he'll keep up the pace.
"Long term, I like the idea of staying in real estate, but it's also exhausting," Policar said. "I don't know if I can handle it for the next 30 years, but for now I enjoy it very much."
Getting serious
When Kira Dennison walked into the REMAX office on Northeast Broadway with a business plan for how she was going to become a successful agent, she caught branch manager Rod Renwick off guard.
"He said, 'You're the second person in this industry to come in with a business plan -- you're hired,' " said Dennison, 32.
While many newbies once joined up with little more than casual preparation, the new crowd brings a more serious, calculated approach.
Dennison, who has a degree in speech communication, said she learned marketing basics by climbing the ranks in Trilogy Software, a business software company in Austin, Texas, that exploded with growth in the late 1990s.
At Trilogy, Dennison said, she was among a crop of 20-somethings that were given $1 million dollar budgets and told, "Get 200 people to an event."
"It was such a fast-paced business that you have to be creative, you have to be innovative," Dennison said. "That has laid a foundation for my real estate career."
After bouncing around among various software companies in Austin and San Francisco, Dennison said, she wanted something more. She went to a "life coach" in San Francisco who suggested her personality fit real estate brokering. So, in 2003, she moved to Portland to enter real estate and rejoin Jeff Capen, an old boyfriend.
Dennison's business plan laid out specific tasks. She resolved to stand in for other agents at open houses every Sunday for three to five months to meet home buyers who might become clients, the plan says. She aimed to make a sign-in sheet, and send each attendee a thank-you note.
Capen, 36, a former executive in a local office of Enron, married Dennison last year and got into real estate this year. The couple's goal is to build a big enough client base that they can live off referred business, spending less time courting new clients, by the time Dennison takes time off to have children.
"We have probably five people that really are advocates for us," Capen said. "If we had 15 people, we wouldn't have to worry about anything at all."