The number of licensed Realtors in Tooele County has been on the decrease since the beginning of this year, according to data from the Tooele County Board of Realtors.

There were 179 full- and part-time Realtors working in Tooele County who were members of the board at the end of 2007, but that number has dropped to 163 as of the start of this month.

The decline comes after several years of growth in the number of licensed Realtors in the county. The number of Realtors increased from 84 in 2005 to 179 by the end of 2007, according to Tooele County Board of Realtors statistics.

Steve Griffith, associate broker for Prudential Utah Real Estate in Tooele, said his firm has seen a few agents take time off because of the slower housing market.

“Over this past year, some of our agents have cut back on their hours, gone out to get other jobs, or put more time into their other jobs,” he said. “We haven’t really seen any just quit altogether, and some of our full-time agents have gone to part-time. It’s not unusual for the kind of market we’re in right now.”

Griffith said less-active agents will become more involved once the housing market picks up speed again.

“It’s normal that when the market picks back up we’ll start to see Realtors work more hours,” he said. “It’s expected that when the market slows down and there aren’t as many buyers out there, there will be fewer active agents. Even though the market right now is relatively decent and not full of all the doom and gloom people say it is, it’s not what it was before.”

Steve Goodsell, broker/owner for Re/Max Lakeside Realty in Stansbury Park, said his firm has also lost agents since the start of the year.

“From the beginning of this year until now, we went from nine to 10 agents down to only five agents, including me,” he said. “People have mainly left to get other full-time jobs, either because personal situations have demanded a more steady income, or because they found the real estate business wasn’t as easy as they thought. However, we do have a couple of agents in training right now, and they will join just as soon as they get the licenses.”

Goodsell said the current market situation may have been harder on newer agents.

“It is hard work,” he said. “You’ve got to be looking to work 60 to 80 hours a week sometimes. But if things pick back up, I’m sure more agents will reactivate.”

However, Coldwell Banker Broker Brad Sutton said his now 29-agent firm has actually gained a few agents since the beginning of 2008. He said the reason was due to the fact that whenever the housing market is going through a rough patch, more real agents will usually sign on with a larger company.

“We’re up three or four agents from what we were at the beginning of January,” Sutton said. “Most of our agents who joined on this year came from smaller companies. You’ll see that a lot, where if the market is slower, agents who are new to the business or ones from smaller firms will move into bigger, more well-known firms.”

Sutton said most smaller agencies run on lower profit margins, and they are more likely to go out of business than the larger ones. He said Coldwell Banker’s Tooele branch is also doing well right now with home sales, although the company is not back to its previous level of sales from two years ago.

“The market is never as good as you want it to be, but it’s never as bad as you think,” Sutton said. “In a market slowdown like the one we’re in right now, the top experienced agents will actually do better than when the market is hot.

The ones who aren’t as experienced will struggle, while the ones who have done it for a while and are used to hard times will get most of the sales during that time.”

Doug Radunich: dougrad@tooeletranscript.com