CA has set up a $5.6 million fund to retrain laid off mortgage brokers. I didn't know drug dealing, used car selling and stripping needed training

And $5.6 million - isn't that about $1 per laid-off REIC ramen eater?

Hat-tip to blownmortgage for the link

Gov. Schwarzenegger Announces Actions to Jump Start California’s Economy through Job Creation, Offset Housing Slump

The Governor also announced that the federal government today awarded up to $5.6 million to help mortgage and banking industry workers laid off as a result of the subprime crisis make career transitions to high-demand jobs in other industries.

REALTORS going away in droves. Thank god. Good riddance.

The NAR reports there's still 1.3 million used home salesmen out there.

Yes, that's 1.3 million too many.

I fully expect to see in the next ten years the death of the REALTOR profession and the NAR.

Yes, there will still be people paid to help clueless homedebtors out with housing transactions, but they will be paid an hourly or fixed amount fee. There will be no such thing as the NAR's MLS. Google will likely be the leading freely accessible online database of homes for sale.

And future generations will be amazed that an illegal uneducated immoral monopolistic cartel was able to steal 6% of the price of a home for doing jack sh*t.

Want a glimpse of what's to come? Think about the last trip you took, and how you did your air and hotel reservations. Then think back 10 or 20 years when you used to use a travel agent to do the same thing.

As housing slumps, realtors quit

"They've tasted success and big money, and now their standard of living has been rocked and reality has set in," says John Baen, a real estate professor at the University of North Texas in Denton. "The whole [economy] has been built on real estate. When the music stops, what is left?"

Evidence is growing that agents, especially in hard-hit markets like Florida, California, and Georgia, are closing up shop in large numbers, experts say.

In Cape Coral, Fla., where only 30 percent of agents sold even a single home last year, real estate agents are "dropping out" daily, says local realtor Ginette Young. The Oregon Association of Realtors reports an 11.5 percent decline statewide of licensed agents in the past year.

"It's a gold-rush mentality," says Michael Davis, an economist at Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business in Dallas. He has been struck by how many agents, brokers, and investors, acting against conventional wisdom of portfolio management, converted large percentages of cash holdings into only a single and somewhat risky investment: property. "I don't know whether they're ignorant or optimistic, perhaps a little of both," says Dr. Davis.