ORLANDO (By Steve Brown, Dallas Morning News) December 8, 2004 - For decades, America's real estate agents lived in an Ozzie and Harriet world.

Many residential agents catered to the same buyers they had sold to since the 1950s: middle-class White families buying homes in the suburbs.

But the new buzz in the business is about diversity.

Real estate experts say that in the coming decades, almost 30 percent of their business could come from immigrant and minority buyers. The industry is gearing up to handle the shift.

"Every part of this country will be affected by the huge tidal wave of minority population growth and immigration," Michael Lee, a California sales agent, told the National Association of Realtors at its annual meeting in Orlando in November. "You'd better learn to deal with these buyers, or you might as well get out of the business."

The latest industry survey suggests about 16 percent of the 6.6 million pre-owned homes sold in the United States this year will go to ethnic minorities. Lee predicts minority and ethnic buyers will soon grow to more than 60 percent of the first-time housing market.

"This is a significant opportunity" for the 1.5 million-member residential sales industry in America, Lee said.

At the convention, thousands of real estate agents crammed into seminars to get tips on working with ethnic buyers.

"To serve this market, we need to treat these folks specially and customize our presentations to meet their needs," Lee told agents. "We as Realtors turn away minority business every day by basically telling them they are not welcome in our office."

The numbers are getting too big for even the most traditional home-sales firms to overlook.

"The immense buying power of these groups is energizing the U.S. consumer market like it never has before," said Jeffrey Humphreys, an economic forecaster for the University of Georgia. "They are reshaping business opportunities in America."

Just the Hispanic market in the United States will see its annual buying power grow from about $686 million to more than $1 trillion by 2009, Humphreys said.

"By 2009, the buying power of Hispanics in this country will exceed the economy of Canada," he said. "It's going to represent an increasing portion of your new customers." And because Hispanic, Black and Asian households in the United States lag behind Anglos in homeownership, the potential is even greater.

Brian Surette, an economist with mortgage company Freddie Mac, predicts Hispanic homeownership rates will quickly top the 50 percent mark from about 47 percent currently.

"Nearly a third of all the growth between now and 2010 is going to come from Latino-headed households," he said. "Almost 90 percent (of Hispanics surveyed) want to become homeowners."

Real estate agents serving Asian immigrants must clear language and cultural hurdles, but the opportunities there are also increasing, consultant Oscar Gonzales said.

"Asian-Americans are the second-fastest-growing homeownership group after Latinos," he said. "In a lot of communities, they are growing faster than the Hispanic population.

"This is really going to have an impact on what our future home buyer is going to look like."