I'm not real sure what compelled me to look this up. Curiosity mostly. Maybe a warped desire to run pivot tables in Excel. Pivot tables are cool, in a geekish sort of way.
I went to the Arizona Department of Real Estate web site and downloaded a huge text file (18MB) of all the licensed real estate agents and brokers in the state of Arizona. I pulled it into Excel, parsed and massaged it a bit and came up with some interesting numbers for the Phoenix area…
There are currently 47,675 individuals in the Phoenix MLS area with an active real estate sales or broker's license. (7,694 Brokers licensees and 39,981 Sales licensees). Below is a table of the breakdown by city:
The data file provided by the AzDRE (which is available to the general public) provides a lot of information, including when the licensee was originally issued a real estate license. This of course means it is relatively easy to manipulate the spreadsheet and glean a little insight into how many years these 47.6K agents have been out there. Rather than bore you with all the gory details, here is a graphical snapshot:
The scale starts at 1950, because there is an agent in the area who first got their license in 1950. The most recent new agents were licensed just yesterday. There is an obvious peak in 2005, and since Arizona requires real estate licenses be renewed every two years, it will be interesting to see how many of those licensed in 2005 renew this year. There have been 1,055 licenses issued to date in 2007, which puts us on a pace for about 5,500 new licenses to be issued this year — equal to 2004's total (this assumes a linear rate for the remainder of the year, which may or may not be a safe assumption. I didn't dig that deep!)
It should be noted that just because there are 47,000+ people out there with active real estate sales and brokers licenses, that does not mean that all 47,000 are selling real estate for a living. There is no question that large numbers of people get a real estate license and do little to nothing with it. I would love to know how many of these license holders are working in real estate full time and actually earning enough to live above the poverty line based solely on their real estate sales income.
Much more statistical analysis could be done here, and I'm sure doing so would make my college Stats professor proud. But I never really did like that guy, and I'm sure many a reader's eyes are glazed over by now. So I'll hold off any further analysis.
What you have here though is enough data to support the fact that you can not swing a dead cat in the Phoenix metro area without smacking a licensed real estate agent upside the head.
Makes picking out a good one a challenge. But you guys all know where to go for that… 
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[tags]Phoenix Real Estate agents, AzDRE, pivot tables, waste of time[/tags]
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Issuance of license: The brokers will be short at least 3 years on experience, since the broker’s license replaces the salesperson’s license. This was one of the idiot BubbleBeefs about me last year, that I’d only been licensed a year.
1950: Bob Kastensmith? Not just a licensee but a broker, a trainer — and a real estate attorney. An mazing man.
Proliferation of licensees: In addition to all the part-timers, there are a lot of people in commercial real estate management who have licenses just in case they are called upon to do something that requires a license.
Even so: Amazing — and horrify — chart!
“The brokers will be short at least 3 years on experience, since the broker’s license replaces the salesperson’s license.”
Ahh yes, excellent point! Also, agents/brokers previously licensed in another state will show short on that experience as the AzDRE database only shows the AZ licensing date.
But still…. I suspect the transfers in from other states are relatively few and the bulk of licensees are sales, so a chart with sales licenses only would look very similar – same shape, shorter bars.
The 1950′er is associate broker Thomas Shuck. There are 29 brokers and 1 salesperson who were originally licensed in the 1950s.
It would be weird to respond to the question, “How long ya been in real estate?” with, “57 years…”
Bob K has “only” been around for 31 years. Never met the man, but his legend precedes him. My broker has mentioned him several times.
Interesting.
Whats amazing is the list I have for only Orange County Real Estate Agents is approx 36000.
This list was givin to me so i won’t post it or anything but of the 36k in this list 16k have no transactions.
I don’t know if this list is for all of 2006 or what.
The part that amazed me is just the number or licensed agents.
Loren
PS – Jay, I like your blog lots of good stuff
Jay, Great job of sourcing / analyzing the data and presenting it here. I’ll point at it frequently I’m sure. Thanks for maintaining a greag Blog!
Jay – interesting post. The cool thing is that most agents don’t have a clue about SEO. I’d say that about 98% don’t. Of them, I would guess that 98% don’t understand it enough or don’t have the time to practice it. If the ones who do understand it and have the time, not many are really good at it. All of which leaves a lot open for those of us who do. I love the internet!
Loren / Steven / Sam – thanks for stopping by and commenting! (and thanks for the compliments)
Sam – after our discussion on Rose Bowl and National Championship rings, I bet you do love the Internet! Me too…
Aloha,
Hi Jay, great blog! I just got my broker’s license in Maui and was intimated what do with it. It seemed pretty stupid to keep working for someone else, but the thought of going out on my own was really scary! But I’ve made the decision to open my own company and spending lots of $ on start up costs, especially office space.
When I was a salesperson, I never got any clients from floor time, so I figure why waste $ on prime office location.
If anyone would like to share some insight on opening their own real estate brokerage and not being w/ a franchise, I’d love to hear from you. All the best, Angela
Your blog site is really great. I am just getting started with blogging. How long did it take to build an online community as large as yours in the blogsphere?