Most real estate agents—from Pennsylvania agents to professionals
holding South Carolina real estate continuing education—are unaware or
unmindful of the dangers of their work. It is not a job that usually carries
with it the dangers of say a policeman’s—but it can be dangerous, as a
Pennsylvania realtor found out recently.
On May 21, agent Sharron Minnich of Prudential Bob Yost
Realtors in West York was abducted and forced at knifepoint to withdraw money
from an automatic teller machine.
The abductor, who posed as a prospective buyer, was
arrested shortly after the incident. The incident exemplifies the dangers that real estate
agents constantly face but unfortunately consistently are underappreciated as
they go about their tasks, which regularly include holding open houses for
sellers, driving buyers around to show them properties, or simply meeting a
prospective client for the first time.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics show, fatal
workplace injuries in the real estate industry hit a high in at least seven years
in 2010, with violent acts causing the most deaths.
“Real estate agents
are so busy, and they lack the formal security training to realize when they
might be in a potentially dangerous situation," pointed out Robert
Siciliano, the CEO of Boston-based realtysecurity.com, which offers safety
courses to real estate groups. Matt Lombardi, a National Association of
Realtors (NAR) vice president who is involved in the trade group's National
Safety Program, revealed that a basic but key defense for agents against
potentially dangerous situations is: Know thy client.
"You need to get
as much information about the person as you can before you decide to start
working with him or her," Lombardi emphasized.
So as the real estate agents (safely) work their clientele
in the recovering housing market, new kids on the block are arriving.
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) predicts changes
in various housing trends over the next two decades as demographics undergo
major shifts. At the center of these changes is a group that has come to play
in this generation the role that the baby boomers used to play. The group is
collectively called, in a nod to the iconic group it is supplanting, echo boomers.
The echo boomers constitute this generation’s 17-31 year
olds. According to the 2011 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home
Buyers and Sellers, these younger home buyers and potential home buyers make up
roughly 31 percent of the latest home purchases.
The echo boomers muster up impressive numbers. It is nearly
62 million strong, with a more diverse ethnicity than the baby boomers. NAR
estimates about 55 percent Caucasian and 45 other ethnic groups versus the baby
boomer group’s 65 percent Caucasian. In addition, the group is college-educated
and probably will stay single longer than the previous generations.
Based on data from the American Community Survey, although
many echo boomers are still too young to enter the home market, indications
already point to significant homeownership increases among the echo boomers compared
with the baby boomers at the same age. "While 900,000 households in the millennial generation [echo boomers]
own their own home, only 500,000 baby boomer households owned their own home at
the same point in their lives," NAR says on its website.
The echo boomers will likely rent first before they buy
their own homes, say real estate industry experts.
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