The 2003 edition of ARELLO's Digest of License Laws & Current Issues, which will be released in greater detail next week, shows that the total number of real estate licensees is slightly tapering off nationwide.

Last year's total U.S. count was 2,309,985 licensees, while this year's count reduced itself by about one percent to 2,282,589 licensees.

Of interest in the report is which U.S. jurisdictions saw relatively significant increases and decreases.

Not surprisingly, warm weather boom areas such as California, Arizona, Florida, Texas saw a greater number of licensees. Also greater in number were Washington D.C., New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

Some U.S. jurisdictions that saw relatively significant decreases including Massachusetts, Montana and Nebraska.

"Licensee counts were 'flat' or slightly down in enough areas that the overall count was down a little more than one percent, despite significant gains in several other licensing jurisdictions" said ARELLO Executive Vice President Craig Cheatham. "Early reports from some of the gainers had many predicting a significant total increase, but it turns out it was isolated to certain portions of the United States."

Why such swings in certain jurisdictions? There is no current record-keeping by ARELLO of how licensees plan to use their licenses, for full time employment or the occasional family or personal real estate purchase or sale, explains Cheatham.

"There was some speculation that the current economic transition was sending laid-off workers into real estate," he conjectures, "and encouraging others to go ahead and secure a license in case their jobs disappeared. Also, with many people pulling their assets from the stock market and putting them into real property, there was some thought that those individuals would get a license to be more informed about their personal transactions. It is likely that some measure of that activity occurred, but it appears that licensee numbers may have peaked last year instead."

Another tale could be told in the inactive files. Some states such as California, Illinois, Michigan, Vermont, Wisconsin did not list how many agents and/or brokers have gone inactive, but the remaining states do report their inactives with interesting results. (Inactives are submitted with actives for totals, along with firms, to obtain grand totals.)

In Massachusetts, where the number of licensees went down, 17,325 brokers are active, but 6,756 are not. There are 27,162 active salespersons, but 11,510 are inactive.

In Texas, where there was a surge in licensees, there are 24,423 inactive salesperson licensees compared to 53,663 active salespersons for a grand total of 78,086. There are also 37,865 active brokers with only 1,794 listed as inactive, or 1.4 brokers for every salesperson.

Of other interest, the total U.S. population in 2002 was 287,843,999. With 2,282,529 licensees, that works out to be one real estate licensee for every 126 persons, including children. According to the U.S. census PopClock, there is one birth every eight seconds, one death every 12 seconds, one international migrant every 24 seconds, and a net gain of one person every 12 seconds.