There may still be questions about whether the bubble has burst in the Southwestern real estate boom but there is no question that the Realtors are coming in for a hard landing. The Los Angeles Times reports that the state association is projecting a 6 percent drop in membership next year because the industry no longer seems like the road to riches.

The same phenomenon has struck Las Vegas, reports the Sun. Since July, some 20 percent of area agents have not bothered to renew their licenses. These are the folks for whom this represented a second career or a possible way out to something that seemed more lucrative.

This is exactly the kind of drop-off that would be predicted by those cold-eyed rationalists who practice Freakonomics. Early this year they showed how the number of Realtors expanded depending on the gross amount of commissions available. A high-cost market like Boston has twice as many agents as Minneapolis and the available commission are about twice as big in Beantown as they are in the Twin Cities. It's the market at work.

And that's what's happening to Realtors in the Southwest. The pros all tell the reporters, in one way or another, that real estate is no job for amateurs or part-timers, especially in a bear market where you have to do more than just collect your share of the multiple-listing fee.

And as I pointed out earlier this year in Business Press, the number of local real estate agents grew exponentially in the last three boom years, so a contraction now can hardly be a surprise.