In professions that have a low barrier to entry like real estate brokerage, membership would be expected to responds fairly quickly to changes in market conditions.

I was inspired to create a chart (with hat tip to Bubble Meter) to show the trend.

I plotted NAR annual membership against houses under construction. I picked Census’ housing units under construction to represent activity (and the fact that I could get data back a while).

The sharp drop in construction probably suggests a sharp drop in NAR membership in the near future since it represents a metric for activity.