Residential real estate broker ranks thinning

Northern Colorado’s residential real estate industry, after a high-flying decade when the ranks of brokers swelled to meet the workload generated by a booming market, is now starting to shrink.

The headcounts from the three boards and associations to which most of the brokers in this region belong show membership declines ranging from about 12 percent in Greeley to 10 percent in Fort Collins and a single-digit drop in Loveland-Berthoud.

The Colorado Division of Real Estate, the watchdog group for the industry, cites the declining number of new broker license applications in justifying steep increases in license fees and other broker…