More Real Estate Agents than Doctors in the US May 24, 2006
Just thought this was an interesting factoid…What does it say about the priorities of the US population when there are more real estate agents per person than there are doctors per person?
There are currently 298,815,342 people in the USA, according to the US Census Bureau. The Real Estate Bloggers writes that there’s a new report from the California Department of Real Estate that says there is a real estate agent for every 52 adults in the state. Let’s take a look at the number of people in the US divided by the number of active physicians (approximately 800,000) and compare that with the population in California divided by the number of real estate agents.
- Population 298,815,342 / doctors 800,000 = 373 people per doctor
- Population in California, 35,893,799 / real estate agents 495,000 = 72 people per real estate agents in California
It’s a chicken-or-egg question, but maybe the number of licenses is related to the huge run up in housing prices in the US, especially in CA and the surrounding states?
Sorry this post has nothing to do about personal finance or tax, but I had to point that out. So to relate this to personal finance, I wonder how many financial advisors there are per person in the US? Apparantly Warren Buffett thinks there are too many of them. (see his famous 2005 letter to his shareholders, titled “How to Minimize Investment Returns” (pdf) on page 17.
From The Real Estate Bloggers
Medical miscalculation creates doctor shortage, USA Today