Yesterday I presented a profitability seminar to a group of midwest real estate brokers. At one point we were discussing the financial impact of the national "anti-REALTOR" campaign. During this discussion one of the participants, a 63 year old grandmother, shared the story of her recent participation in a career day program sponsored by her daughter's middle school the week before.

She recalled how she had prepared a presentation talking about the benefits of a career in real estate. When her turn came she launched into her program only to be almost immediately interupted by a stream of questions from the 7th and 8th graders in attendance. The questions were almost all addressed to negative situations that the student's parents had experienced during recent real estate transactions. The remainder of her program time was spent dealing with questions that ranged from why the agent never returned calls to why the agent's pay was connected to how much the house sold for.