Marco Huerta and Youngmin Bae bought their Burbank home without ever meeting their real estate agent. Instead, they scoured listings for their favorite neighborhoods, haggled over prices and even wrote their offer using Marco's cellphone.
There was no housewarming plant on the porch when they moved in, but the couple aren't complaining: They received a $10,000 check as a "rebate" from their agent's 3% commission.
"It's a great incentive," said Marco Huerta, 32. "This is what capitalism's all about."
Experiences like these are leading some to wonder whether Realtors may soon go the way of travel agents. Already weakened by the sour housing market, the profession faces increasing challenges from Internet-based services that help people save thousands on a home purchase.
The number of agents typically declines in a housing slump and rebounds when the market recovers. But this time, "when we see an upturn in the cycle, any recovery in the ranks of residential real estate brokers will be limited by a reduced need for their services," said Stuart Gabriel, director of UCLA's Ziman Center for Real Estate.
"The real estate brokerage industry is not going away, but the combination of efficiency gains via the Internet and the cyclical downturn will both be significant forces to their rapidly shrinking ranks," Gabriel said.
The National Assn. of Realtors reports a 13% drop in membership since 2006.
In California, which has been hard hit by the housing downturn, just 2,030 people took examinations for broker and agent licenses in March, down from more than 18,000 in March 2005, according to the state Department of Real Estate.
Although the weak housing market accounts for most of that decline, some real estate agents acknowledge that the Internet is forcing longer-term changes.
"Our monopoly on information is gone," said David Emerson, a Lakewood broker for 25 years. "The Internet changes everything. . . . The numbers [of Realtors] will diminish."
For decades, agents generally had the only reliable access to complete, detailed listings of all properties for sale. They would select homes from the lists to show buyers, then drive them around to view properties.
Sellers relied on their agents to research other home sales to set a list price and to talk up the property to other agents representing potential buyers.
