Just in time for the National Association of Realtors' (NAR) annual mid-year legislative meetings May 14th through May 19, 2007, the trade organization has released its annual Member Profile for 2007.

According to the introduction, the residential and commercial real estate industries contribute about 20 percent of the gross national product including sales, property management, appraisals, relocation services, and more services essential to transactions.

With professionals assisting in a majority of real estate transactions, it's important for the public, vendors, lawmakers and other Realtors to understand who these real estate professionals are.

First, the survey covers only Realtors (members in good standing of the NAR,) not other licensed real estate professionals. Seventy-five percent of Realtors specialize in residential real estate, with a majority (63 percent) holding a salesperson's license. Twenty-two percent are brokers, while 22 percent are broker-associates. Only three percent of NAR members hold appraisers' licenses.

Interestingly, Realtors are slowly expanding into other areas of real estate besides sales. In 1996, 87 percent of Realtors were involved in residential brokerage. In 2007, only 75 percent specialized in residential brokerage, with four percent in counseling, six percent in relocation, two percent in international real estate, specialties which were less than zero in 1996. The same percentage of Realtors were in commercial brokerage (two percent) and property management (four percent) in 1996 and 2007. Realtors increased in land development by only one percent from 1996 to 2007.

While most operate primarily as salespeople, Realtors also have secondary business specialties including relocation (27 percent), land development (18 percent), commercial brokerage (18 percent), counseling (16 percent), residential brokerage (12 percent), commercial property management (11 percent) and residential property management (eight percent,) as well as residential appraisal, international sales, auctions and commercial appraisals.

Thirteen percent of Realtors have one year or less experience, while 17 percent have six to 10 years and 18 percent have 16 to 25 years experience, suggesting a relatively rapid turnover for newcomers. In a related finding, the NAR says that experience tends to matter -- 18 percent of Realtors with two years of experience have zero transactions while only 10 percent of those with three to five years experience have zero transactions and 18 percent have between six and ten transactions.

This translates into earnings. A whopping 42 percent of Realtors with two years or experience or less grossed less than $10,000 in 2006, while only 13 percent of those with three to five years experience made that amount. The median earnings for those with two years experience or less was $15,300 while the most experienced Realtors - those with 16 years experience or more -- grossed a median of $76,200.

The median gross income for all Realtors in 2006 was $47,700, down slightly from 2004 when the median earnings were $49,300.

Several reasons could apply to the downsizing of Realtor earnings, including the softening of the housing market in key areas. Realtors sold 6.5 million homes in 2006, but had sold a record seven million in 2005. While the decline is slight, the sales were dramatically lower in key markets.

Income has steadily declined as membership has expanded in the NAR. In 2004, median earnings had decreased 5.6 percent between 2002 and 2004 while NAR membership increased 26.6 percent to 1.1 million.

Also, new members don't have one of the greatest sources of income -- repeat business and referrals by past clients.

"I think one of the more interesting findings is on the growth of repeat and referral business over time, underscoring an important contributor at to how people become successful," notes Walt Molony, spokesperson for NAR.

He points out that one of the reasons experienced Realtors do better than newcomers is referrals from past clients and repeat business. One out of five residential Realtors reported that up to 25 percent of their business was from referrals or repeat customers and 27 percent reported that more than 50 percent of their business in 2006 came from referrals and repeat customers.

The share of business from customer referrals was just one of several new features of the Member Survey. Also added were:

• Frequency with which REALTORS® use blogs or podcasts for business purposes.

• The share of customers whose primary language is something other than English

• The share of foreign nationals among clients and customers

"The reasons we added these questions to this member survey were generally to get a better sense of how the REALTORS® business activities are evolving," says Paul C. Bishop, spokesperson for NAR, research division. "In the area of technology we wanted to get a sense of the penetration of newer communications technologies in the real estate business. In the demographics area we also want to sharpen our understanding of the customers and clients that REALTORS are serving. We also differentiate more clearly between gross personal income (before taxes and expenses) and net personal income (after taxes and expenses) in this survey than in past member surveys."