Economic slowdown thins ranks of local realty agents

Two years ago Maurice Watkins' budding career as a real estate agent seemed off to a good start. Listings sold quickly, and buyers were aplenty.

Now, the 28-year-old Norfolk resident spends hours each day in his Granby Street apartment trolling career Web sites in search of a job. "At the end of 2007, you saw a real drastic change," he said. "The market transformed. My client base was dwindling; I wasn't making any money."

Watkins is among nearly 900 Hampton Roads real estate agents who called it quits last year amid the most sluggish housing market in more than a decade. Home sales in South Hampton Roads dropped 22.2 percent in 2008 compared with 2007, according to the local multiple listing service.

The service, Virginia Beach-based Real Estate Information Network, said it had 7,057 licensed agents in December, down 11.3 percent from 7,953 in December 2007. It is the first annual decline since 2000 and the second in the service's records. The Hampton Roads Realtors Association saw a similar drop last year in its membership, which fell 9.4 percent to 4,039 from 4,456 in 2007. Charlee Gowin, the association's chairwoman and an agent with Prudential Towne Realty, said the organization is expecting an 11 percent drop this year.

"Economics, no doubt, has played a big part in it," Gowin said. "There was a swell when the market was good. Even people who have been in the business for a long time have been having a much harder time."

Watkins, who was an agent for Virginia Beach-based Wainwright Real Estate, said he went from selling four homes a month in August 2006 to about one home most months in early 2008. He sold his final home in June.

"Right now I've been looking for anything that has something to do with real estate," he said. "I saved money over the course of the time, but I'm starting to run a little thin."

He also has applied to retail chains Best Buy, Barnes & Noble and Home Depot, to no avail.

"I think in the past few years, the buying frenzy provided people an income, and they didn't really have to seek out the business," said Ron Foresta, president of the resale division for Rose & Womble Realty.

Kevin Barklage, 47, of Virginia Beach, spent 18 months working full time as an agent during the sales boom.

"It was crazy for a while," Barklage said. "I was working with friends and family mostly. It wasn't that hard to find people who were buying, regardless of the rising prices. Then, everything started to melt down."

After the market began to cool, he found a job as marketing director for a small development company. His wife, Rhea, also an agent, took a full-time job as an office manager but still sells real estate on the side for Wainwright.

"We were trying to survive on 100 percent commission jobs," Barklage said. "There just wasn't as much business out there."

Norfolk resident Sissy Deaton spent four years as a real estate agent before returning in November to work 40 hours a week as a bartender at the Colley Cantina in Ghent.

Deaton, 38, now works part time as an agent for Prudential Towne Realty.

"I actually rode the wave a little longer than I should have," she said. "I probably should have gone back to bartending six months earlier."

Bartending is old hat for Deaton, who spent years mixing drinks before getting into real estate in 2004. Still, it was not easy to go back.

"It's sort of a step back for me," she said. "I'm hoping by the end of the year the market is at a point that I can go back to selling full time."

People such as Deaton still show up as agents in the multiple listing service or Realtors association because they have maintained their memberships despite having full-time jobs outside real estate.

"There's a lot of people who have just stepped away, maybe not given their license up, but are doing other things," Deaton said.

Those agents must spend thousands of dollars a year in dues to keep their licenses current, buy insurance and pay for access to the multiple listing service. That can add up, especially when sales begin dwindling. Deaton said that as her sales volume began to fall, she was faced with finding a way to make ends meet.

"There was no choice in the matter," she said. "I'm not going to lose my house working in real estate."

Josh Brown, (757) 446-2318, josh.brown@pilotonline.com