Real Estate agents are aplenty, most with few or no sales

Most agents seldom sell homes, according to a new study published by the Consumer Federation of America last week.

The study, CFA’s third of three on this topic, suggests that a significant portion of agents in the U.S. sell at most five homes in a year. On average for all areas studied, 70% of agents sold five or fewer homes in the past year, and 49% sold only one or no homes.

Many of the individual agents in the study had other full-time jobs as “teachers, government workers, restaurant servers, commercial employees, and a large number in associated industries – mortgage lending, real estate appraisal, commercial and residential investment, and the practice of real estate law.”

Other analysts have similarly concluded that the top 20% of agents are responsible for 80-90% of transactions.

A 2015 NAR study noted that becoming a licensed agent takes on average 70 hours, which is 302 hours less than it takes to become a cosmetologist.

“The knowledge and competency gap from the most to the least is very large, due to the low barriers to entry, low continuing education requirements, and the lure of quickly making big dollars,” the NAR study reads. “… The delta between great real estate service and poor real estate service has simply become too large, due to the unacceptably low entry requirements to become a real estate agent.”