Buying & Selling: Tough Times For Realtors

I know it's tough to conjure up sympathy for realtors after the years of cheerleading an overextended housing market, but one sure sign that the worm has turned is how drastically agents' and brokerage's fortunes have faded.

Last week we had the news that Countrywide Financial was dispensing with 5% of its workforce. Today I read that CB Richard Ellis, the country's largest commercial broker, is devouring a prominent competitor:

"It means we're joining two significant real estate firms and combining them into one better organization both locally and nationally," said John Germano, senior managing director in the Washington office of CB Richard Ellis. "You're going to get a company that has more service lines and an unprecedented level of talent," he said. "There will be very little cannibalization, very little overlap."

This may not seem like it affects the residential market, but as developers move further away from housing and into commercial properties, there's going to be a much smaller field of wiggle room for them to deal with. CB Richard Ellis is all over D.C., for instance, so investors are going to bet on the sure thing. And with housing falling down precipitously, the real estate money is going to be flowing towards offices for quite some time.

Posted at November 1, 2006 01:30 PM

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I know it's tough to conjure up sympathy for realtors after the years of cheerleading an overextended housing market, but one sure sign that the worm has turned is how drastically agents' and brokerage's fortunes have faded. Last week we had the news that Countrywide Financial was dispensing with 5% of its workforce. Today I read that CB Richard Ellis, the country's largest commercial broker, is devouring a prominent competitor: "It means we're joining two significant real estate firms and combining them into one better organization both locally and nationally," said John Germano, senior managing director in the Washington office of CB Richard Ellis. "You're going to get a company that has more service lines and an unprecedented level of talent," he said. "There will be very little cannibalization, very little overlap." This may not seem like it affects the residential market, but as developers move further away from housing and into commercial properties, there's going to be a much smaller field of wiggle room for them to deal with. CB Richard Ellis is all over D.C., for instance, so investors are going to bet on the sure thing. And with housing falling down precipitously, the real estate money is going to be flowing towards offices for quite some time.