SelectLeaders Launches RE Job Barometer

NEW YORK CITY-It is difficult to get an idea of the real estate job market today. Where are there jobs available and which markets have the greatest demand are questions that are difficult to answer. But SelectLeaders, in conjunction with Cornell University’s Program in Real Estate, has developed a Job Barometer to assess the commercial real estate job market in the US. The report will be issued twice yearly, studying a six-month period.

Anthony J. LoPinto, the founder of SelectLeaders and CEO of Equinox Partners, tells GlobeSt.com that this assessment of the marketplace has been more than a year in the making. “There has not been available any reliable evaluation of where the jobs are by sector and region,” he says, adding that because of the nature of the business it is very difficult to get an accurate reading. To create the database, LoPinto opted to go beyond SelectLeaders’ understanding of the online real estate job market and tap an independent source to provide data and be an integral part of the assessment process. Cornell University’s Program in Real Estate and its director David Funk were tapped to be that independent source.

The inaugural job barometer, which is being released in a couple of days, contains 36 pages of data, breaking it out in a number of ways. The spring 2007 report found that there has been significant growth already this year in the number of real estate jobs posted, increasing 35% from February to April, a significant finding according to LoPinto. Additionally, 62% of senior executives plan to increase the size of their firm in the next six months, compared to a year ago; also 66% of those executives expect the total compensation packages for new hires to rise in the same time frame.