A career in the property sector is out of favour with students and the numbers applying to become real estate agents or property managers have gone down drastically, according to Monday’s Financieele Dagblad.

According to student funding body Duo, the number of students signing up for property-related courses at hbo colleges has more than halved. In 2008, there were 651 students studying to become real estate agents. Now there are just 266.

Vocational training colleges also report a large downturn in student numbers. The real estate association NVM’s own training scheme had 100 participants last year, compared with 600 before the financial crisis started.