The real estate business is riding a wave of change these days. I am not a real estate agent – I have never sold property. I have, however, spent 35 years watching the real estate business in Canada. In all those years I have seen the number of people in the business grow from about 30,000 to more than 100,000.

I met a lot of people when they first got into real estate who are now wise veterans of the industry. I also met many who came to work in this business and then left it quickly. I have seen the elation of success as well as the anguish of failure first hand. Both sides are extraordinary to witness.

I have known some rich people who got into this industry and were eaten up by it. A lot of them were able to take the financial hit but most would never recover from the emotional damage they endured. I have also seen many come to the business penniless, borrowing money for the courses, sleeping on friend’s couches while they started looking for sales and then becoming millionaires literally overnight. These are the people that we envy and try to emulate. The vast majority of real estate brokers and salespeople that I know have found their niche. They are steady Eddies and Edies who enjoy their work, make an okay living (and some not-so-okay a living) and still enjoy their work.

The measure of a good real estate agent is not the income they make but the way they operate. I have learned after all this time that integrity is the foundation of happiness in any job or walk of life, most certainly in real estate. I wish I understood it better when I was a younger man. I believe you know it too. I wish for you that you understand it too.

I am watching the business today with trepidation. I know that organized real estate began in some parts of Canada more than 100 years ago and as I look through the records of the past, it seems to me this really became a significant industry when the first group of agents organized co-operatively as a sharing organization.

Back then, one of the primary reasons real estate agents got organized was to set a common rate of commission. The people in the business talked and wrote about the importance of real estate agents maintaining a standard rate of commission so that no member of this group would undercut the others. That way the integrity of the work and service to customers would be held to the highest standard possible. If the service was to falter by any member, they would be asked to leave the organization.

That has changed significantly.

Another significant change is not so much the robust growth in the number of people in the industry but the one major glitch in that growth that I saw during the 1990s. The number of members in organized real estate fell in that decade from about 100,000 to about 60,000. Almost half were gone, seemingly in just a matter of months.

I heard a lot of theories about the circumstances of that decade. There were certainly wild fluctuations in the world economy in those days. Real estate activity fell considerably. What is not mentioned, however, is that higher standards were also implemented for education courses for real estate licensing and greater financial commitments were required for people entering the business. In my opinion this was a primary reason why the number of Realtors in the country fell so suddenly. Some people suggest the commitment to maintaining a real estate license both financially and professionally resulted in the loss of a lot of part-time real estate agents in the 1990s.

There are suggestions today that new and higher standards for real estate licensing should be introduced like they were in the ʼ90s, to discourage those who wish to enter the business with less commitment to do the job, and instil a greater integrity to those who work in the industry. I am not sure. I think it may be a discussion worth having.

Yogi Berra once said, “You can observe a lot of things just by watching.”  I am not sure I am as smart or as profound as Yogi, but I know what he meant.

Heino Molls is publisher of REM. Email [email protected].