Anthony J. LoPinto, the founder of SelectLeaders and CEO ofEquinox Partners, tells GlobeSt.com that this assessment of themarketplace has been more than a year in the making. "There has notbeen available any reliable evaluation of where the jobs are bysector and region," he says, adding that because of the nature ofthe business it is very difficult to get an accurate reading. Tocreate the database, LoPinto opted to go beyond SelectLeaders'understanding of the online real estate job market and tap anindependent source to provide data and be an integral part of theassessment process. Cornell University's Program in Real Estate andits director David Funk were tapped to be that independentsource.

The inaugural job barometer, which is being released in a coupleof days, contains 36 pages of data, breaking it out in a number ofways. The spring 2007 report found that there has been significantgrowth already this year in the number of real estate jobs posted,increasing 35% from February to April, a significant findingaccording to LoPinto. Additionally, 62% of senior executives planto increase the size of their firm in the next six months, comparedto a year ago; also 66% of those executives expect the totalcompensation packages for new hires to rise in the same timeframe.

The barometer finds a misalignment between the types of jobspeople are seeking and the ones that are available. Roughly 12% ofsubmitted resumes were for acquisition positions, although thatconstituted only 4% of the available job market; and 7% ofsubmitted resumes were for development positions, with that sectormade up only 2% of the postings. Conversely, only 2% of submittedresumes were for property management positions, although thepostings for this were 9%.