The Top 20% of Agents Do 65% of Transactions

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There is a commonly held belief that in real estate, the top 20 percent of agents do 80 percent of the deals – a ratio that is close, but not entirely accurate. 

Why it matters: The truth is that the industry is concentrated, but not that concentrated – the top 20 percent of agents do 65 percent of deals – leaving a very long tail of producing agents.

  • Like my previous research, this data is provided by CoreLogic/Cotality, covering 85 percent of the market: 3.4 million sales and 840,000 producing agents in 2024. 
     

  • And a shoutout to my friend Aziz Sunderji who I collaborated with on these fantastic visualizations.

Agent productivity is heavily weighted on each end of the spectrum: a small number of high-producers and a lot of low-producers.

  • The top 1 percent of agents, which also includes high-production teams, do an astonishing 18 percent of deals.
     

  • In a team, deal attribution usually falls to one agent, which makes it impossible to differentiate between individual agents and teams in the data.

Agent productivity varies wildly between these groups; a simple “average” doesn’t tell the whole story.

  • Highly productive agents and teams (the top 20 percent) are averaging 26 transactions per year.
     

  • While the remaining 80 percent of agents are averaging just 3.5 transactions per year.

 
 

A large number of low-producing agents seems to be a truism of the U.S. real estate market.

  • Even in a down market, the number of low-producing agents isn’t changing – in fact, it’s increasing.
     

  • Despite challenging market conditions, the survivability of the low-production, part-time agent remains as strong as ever.

 
 

The bottom line: The 80/20 rule is close, but not exactly the truth, when it comes to agent productivity in the U.S. real estate market.

  • In addition to a small, elite group of high-performing agents and teams, there is an extremely long tail of low-producing, part-time agents.
     

  • The implications are significant for anyone looking to parter with agents – portals, brokerages, or tech vendors – do you go after the small number of high-producers, or target the extremely long tail?