1. Introduction There are a number of forces, both from inside and outside the real estate industry, which affect the income levels of the real estate broker community. Inside forces such as real estate brokerage rm consolidations or mergers impact the operating structures of brokerage rms and their Realtors1. Outside forces such as uctuating interest rates,
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BENJAMIN ET AL.
demographic changes, and changing information technology affect brokerage activity. The rapid increase in information ow made possible by technological advances such as the Internet for e-mail and for personal or company Web sites, online real estate nancing sources, cellular phones, and personal digital assistants such as the Palm Pilot, along with other transforming information technologies, all allow for greater Realtor1 productivity and efciency. Greater productivity and efciency could, therefore, lead to greater Realtor1 income.1 This paper examines how use of new information technology by Realtors1 inuences the income of Realtors1. Using more than 6,000 usable observations from the 1999 National Association of Realtors1 member prole survey, we examine the impact of technology usage on the income levels of Realtors1. Factor analysis captures the multifaceted effects of technological change in a two-step procedure. First, we develop factor loadings for eight different measures of technology usage. We then perform a regression analysis of Realtors1 income using a variety of licensee (real estate brokers and salespersons who are Realtors1) demographic and brokerage rm characteristic variables along with our factor score for technology usage. Our results show that the use of the Internet and other types of information technologies is positively related to earnings of Realtors1. In a second regression analysis, we use our technology factor score to capture how a variety of specic Realtor1 demographics and brokerage rm characteristics affect the use of technology. We nd that technology usage rises with schooling, number of rms for which the agent has worked, marriage, franchise afliation, rm size, ownership interest, and hours worked. Technology usage falls, by contrast, with age, sex, and race. This paper ndings should increase our knowledge concerning those technology variables that impact real estate brokerage productivity and income. This paper is divided into six sections. Sections 2 and 3 examine prior research on technology and the earnings of Realtors1 and how the use of innovative multiple technologies could impact the incomes of Realtors1. Section 4 describes our theoretical model. Section 5 discusses the survey data and empirical ndings. We conclude the paper with a summary of our ndings and provide some observations. 2. Prior research on technology and the earnings of Realtors1 Prior research has looked at the factors that inuence Realtors1 earnings, but few studies have examined the impact of enhanced information technology on the earnings of brokers. Past studies develop models which explain the distribution of earnings in real estate sales based on the human capital earnings model developed by Mincer (1970). These models basically express income as a function of education, work experience, and rm size, along with other variables. In a recent extensive literature review of these prior studies that examine the determinants of real estate brokerage rm and licensee incomes, Benjamin et al. (2000) report that many factors inuence real estate licensee income both positively and negatively. As shown in Table 1, these positive factors include (a) number of hours worked, (b) experience, (c) education, (d) rm size, (e) manager/ownership interest, (f ) rm reputation, (g) franchise afliation, (h) working in a metro area, (i) professional

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