When I found out our MLS provides data on each agent’s performance, I was extremely curious. I drank 3 cups of coffee and looked up stats on all my agent friends. (3 cups = 1 blog post.) If you’re an agent you can check it out too.
You can also look at the bulk rankings. You can find out how you rank among all agents by volume or units. If that doesn’t get your competitive juices flowing, I don’t know what will.
I used those rankings to figure out what it takes to be in the top cohorts of agents and approximately what that means financially for the agents with that performance. The data came from calendar year 2018.
The Break Down
How much do top performers make?
Assumptions
- 3% commission rate.
- Broker takes 20% of commissions, but is capped at $25,000.
- Expense rate is equal to 10% of Gross Commission Income after split.
Top Performers
| Rank | # Of Members | Hurdle | Net |
| Top 1% | 35 | $ 19,123,883 | $ 493,845 |
| Top 5% | 180 | $ 9,268,090 | $ 227,738 |
| Top 10% | 360 | $ 6,358,105 | $ 149,169 |
| Top 20% | 719 | $ 3,717,049 | $ 80,288 |
| Top 50% | 1798 | $ 1,128,400 | $ 24,373 |
- The gap between top 10% and top 5% isn’t as significant as the gap between top 20% to top 10%.
- For reference the 2017 median income in Birmingham was $53,107
- The Federal Poverty Line for a family of four ($24,257) happens to coincide with the top 50% hurdle.
How much of the total real estate sales “pie” is attributed to the top performers?
Here’s what happens when you add up all the volume from each cohort.
| Rank | Sum Volume | Percent Of Total MLS Volume |
| Top 1% | $ 990,509,431 | 11% |
| Top 5% | $ 2,827,290,798 | 31% |
| Top 10% | $ 4,205,038,533 | 46% |
| Top 20% | $ 5,961,008,076 | 66% |
| Top 50% | $ 8,245,834,467 | 91% |
- It’s “winner take most.”
- Almost half the volume is done by the top 10%
- The top 50% of agents do almost all the business.
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