I supposedly have been "retired" for aboout 6 years but Cindy and I have been rehabbing houses lately. To do this efficiently I decided to get my real estate license. The small firm I joined 3 years ago was bought out by a large firm a year or so ago. This firm had 250 agents in 5 or 6 offices. This week we all got a notice for a mandatory meeting today and when I got there there were only about 40 agents present. The owner told us that effectively immediately he was closing the whole business. Not really a big deal for me and since we are independent contractors we can just go somewhere else. Of the agents I talked to today, none of them had done any business this month. And this is in one of the few parts of the country where real estate business is still pretty good.