How real estate grads rate the market

Following up our post today on seasoned pros vs. rookies in real estate, here's a look at additional data from St. Cloud State prof Steven Mooney's survey of 135 graduates of the university's real estate program.

The data come from surveys done in early 2006, 2008 and 2010. He labels them '05, '07 and '09 because those were the years he asked graduates to reflect on. Here's the data broken down by where the graduate works and how they rated the market.

(Forgive my lousy graphic arts skills.)

"In the 2009 survey nobody thought the market was very good and only a handful thought the market was good," said Mooney.

You can almost see the real estate cycle by looking at the 2005 results where nobody thought the market was poor to the 2009 results where nobody thought the market was very good.

In 2009 the industry with the 'rosiest' outlook appears to be the property managers, with 37% thinking that the market was average to good. Only the mortgage bankers were close to that with 35% thinking the market was average to good.

It's hard to draw a lot of firm conclusions. The sample size is relatively small and limited to the grads of the St. Cloud State program. But the assessments of those surveyed matched up pretty well with reality.

Still, the grads' 2007 predictions about the future were a little, uh, optimistic.

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