A good friend of mine who is relatively new in the real estate business has respectfully referred to us as Old Timers. What he means by this is that those of who started our careers during a boom time (for example, the mid-to-late 90's in Denver), had a lot of good graces from the market, which of course, most newbie agents entering the field today don't have.

Now, before you get irritated with my friend, don't! He's a terribly smart and insightful guy and I'm impressed that he's not scared to call it like he sees it.

Anyway, I've always defended myself (and all of y'all) by arguing that selling real estate even in a boom market is no picnic and that plenty of new agents failed back then, in similar numbers as they do today.

Do you remember how much fun it was to have 20 buyers ... but nothing to sell them? Checking the MLS for new listings every half hour (before the days of interior photos, so you had no idea what a place looked like without actually going to see it), running around like crazy to be the first one in and finding an Under Contract rider on the sign already, writing ridiculous offers and competing with 5 other equally ridiculous ones?

And I don't know ‘bout your market, but 2000 and 2001 weren't much fun either even BEFORE 9/11 (and those were my two highest producing years).

Fair enough.

Well, I had a conversation today with another agent who started in the business during the same boom market I did and is still going strong. He has a different viewpoint on the matter; one that made me think my newbie friend might be onto something.

He reminded me that during the Denver boom, buyers were easy to come by and any rookie agent could have a dozen active buyers with a little effort. Okay, so we didn't have much to sell them, ... which has helped us tremendously through the years. Maybe those buyers never bought anything, but we worked our backsides off for them and they remembered that. They introduced us to their friends. They invited us to their parties. And, many of them did eventually buy... and then sell. And then buy again.

He also pointed out that real estate was a hot topic at any social gathering -- in a positive sense, not the doom & gloom you hear today. If you had a passing knowledge of your marketplace, you could attract a captive audience with those five magic words "I'm a real estate agent!"

So, maybe we were a little bit lucky. Third base? Nah. But I'll concede that today's new agents may have it harder than we Old Timers did.