HOUSING: Real estate agents bailing out, except in Southwest ...

Real estate agents are getting out of the profession in California ?- except in Southwest Riverside County, according to the California Department of Real Estate and the Southwest Riverside County Association of Realtors.

A housing crunch left real estate agents faced with selling houses for less than what homeowners owed in mortgages, working with lenders suddenly terrified to give out loans, and otherwise battling headwinds that dramatically reduced their sales.

For many agents, especially those attracted by a housing boom that made the profession seem like easy money, that meant it was time to leave. But in Southwest Riverside County, a few people decided a slow market was just the time to jump in.

I figured if I could get my license and learn about it (real estate), by the time I was really good at it, Id be ready when the market started to come back up, said Diane Caddy, a Murrieta Realtor who got her license in 2010.

Caddys entrance to the profession was decidedly countercyclical from a statewide perspective: The number of licensed sales agents and brokers in March fell to 426,585, down 22 percent from a 2007 peak. The ranks of sales agents, the entry-level license, fell off steeply, down 28 percent to 283,596 in March.

Real estate licenses expire after four years, so people letting their license expire this year last renewed in 2008.

Yet Southwest Riverside County bucked the trend. The membership of its association sank from 4,100 in 2007 to 2,500 in 2009, but this year climbed to 3,100, thanks to people such as Caddy.

Caddy had been a frustrated fashion photographer forced to shoot weddings to make a living when she decided to start taking real estate courses in 2009.

I was thinking, we bought our home in 2007, as first-time homebuyers, we were thinking it cant go any lower than this, she said.

In fact, it did. House prices kept falling from 2007, settling at a median price of $198,000 in December, according to a North County Times analysis of records from the Riverside County assessors office. But the overall number of house sales came back, rising from 10,390 to 13,553 last year.

Joe McGowan, chairman of the Southwest County association, said the renewed activity in his market was attracting new people to the profession.

The tremendous backlog of homes that still have to go through the cycle of correction ?- whatever that number is that makes up that inventory, we have a tremendous amount of work to be done to come out of this correction, McGowan said.

North San Diego County saw no such rebound last year, perhaps accounting for its ongoing decline in Realtors. Membership in the North San Diego County Association of Realtors peaked in 2006 with 6,563 members and fell to 4,071 as of March, said Chris Osteen, chairman of the association.

The median house price saw some recovery from its low and now sits at $415,000, according to the association. But the number of houses sold fell to 8,140 in North County, a 30-year low, according to a North County Times analysis of records from the San Diego County assessors office.

Still, shedding some of the less dedicated real estate agents has an upside, said David Deisinger, a Carlsbad real estate agent.

Theres a lot more quality agents, he said. The deals that Ive done have been as smooth as you possibly can get em.

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