Too Many Real Estate Agents
There are more real estate agents than actual houses for sale in the United States. Any given day, you're likely to see about half a million homes for sale, and there are 1.5 million members of the National Association of Realtors.
Economist Sonia Gilbukh, with co-author Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, finds that this isn't just a problem for real estate agents facing extra competition. Their new working paper finds that too many new real estate agents selling homes can make downturns worse for the entire housing market.
Sonia Gilbukh and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham's working paper: https://paulgp.github.io/papers/Heterogeneous_Real_Estate_Agents_and_the_Housing_Cycle.pdf
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