It’s little surprise that the booming real estate market has drawn a bumper crop of college graduates seeking their fortunes in the profession both on the commercial and residential side.

Local schools are producing more young developers, mortgage lenders and brokers for a market that’s been booming with jobs.

“Our students are generally optimistic about real estate right now,” said Sonia Savoulian, director of alumni and student services for the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. “They see a lot of opportunity. This is a business they are glad to get into.”

At USC, where two graduate schools and one undergraduate school offer degrees with a real estate concentration, 130 students received degrees this spring, up from about 50 five years ago.

At UCLA, the number of graduate students belonging to the Anderson Real Estate Association, which promotes the sector for its career opportunities, jumped to 105 this year from 25 five years ago. The school will offer its first undergraduate real estate course next spring and plans to offer a degree in the field down the road.

“Getting a job out of the program is really not a challenge,” said Brian Garrigan, a retail broker for Irvine-based Reza Investment Group, who earned his master’s in real estate development at USC last month. “Most of us were recruited by large development companies.”

The number of licensed real estate brokers grew by one-third in the past five years, to 443,378 in May, according to the California Department of Real Estate. With more agents on the scene, a shortage of deals-per-agent could hit the profession.

Of course, veteran brokers pick up the lion’s share of the business. Young brokers “probably have spent a lot of money on refrigerator magnets,” said Jack Kyser, senior economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. “A lot of them will probably get out of the business after awhile.”

Students point to an estimated shortage of 280,000 housing units in the Los Angeles area as evidence that there will be enough demand and development activity in future years to keep everyone busy.

“Right now the timing seems to be good,” said Omer Ben-Zur, who is on track to earn a master’s degree in business administration from UCLA next spring.

He said he understands there will be bad times, but said: “We will be able to make a lot of money again. You have to get into this business to stay, not just a short time and move on.”

And just as during the tech boom, some students become entrepreneurs as soon as school’s out.

“You can go off on your own and be a developer or an investor (after graduation) and that was something that was attractive to a lot of my classmates,” said Jaime Zadra, who earned her M.B.A. from UCLA last year and is now an associate loan originator at Prudential Mortgage Capital Co.

That’s what Dan Almquist and his classmate, Tyson Skillings, did after getting master’s degrees from USC last month. The L.A.-based development company they formed, Sequoia Real Estate Group, is already looking to close a couple of deals on properties it plans to convert to mixed-use and retail. Though a rookie, Almquist said he does not anticipate any hassles in getting financing.

“There is a lot of money chasing a limited numbers of deals,” he said. “Lenders are fairly aggressive in what they want to do. They need to place money in order to make money.”

Almquist believes a real estate slowdown could actually be beneficial because more opportunity would be created for those who are in for the long haul when the speculators get shaken out.

“They are looking to overpay and they might not necessarily know what they are getting into,” said Almquist. “It makes it difficult for companies like ours.”

How well the newcomers do in a declining market may depend on their networking skills. Some are already bracing for a shakeout. “(The market) is way too overheated,” said Zadra. “There is too much capital which is driving cap rates down and prices up.”