Insights from REAL Trends brokerage performance benchmark report.
REAL Trends benchmarks brokerage performance in a variety of categories, such as the ratio of revenues to expenses, agent contribution to Gross Margin, and Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA), and more.
Recently, we looked at some national brand data to see the relationship between agents and employees, and closed transactions per employee. We used calendar year data from the REAL Trends 500 and the Nation’s Best Brokerage Firms (1,770 total brokerage firms) as the basis for our study. Here is what we found:
- For all brands, Leading Real Estate Companies of the World (Leading RE) members and other independent brokerage firms, the national average was 13.4 agents per employee and 119.4 closed transactions per employee.
- Among national brands, HomeSmart had the highest productivity in both categories with one employee per 67.6 agents, and one employee for each 332.2 closed transactions.
- The national network at the lower end of the scale for agents per employee was Leading RE members with 7.4 agents per employee.
- For national brands, Coldwell Banker firms had 8.8 agents per employee.
- Looking at transactions per employee, we found Sotheby’s affiliates averaged 57.6 transactions per employee followed by Leading RE member firms at 63.7 and Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices affiliates with 69.2.
We weren’t surprised about the HomeSmart data as they are prominent among lower cost, highly efficient brokerage firms. Nor were we surprised about the data for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Coldwell Banker, Leading RE and Sotheby’s—as the firms we looked at are in higher-average home price markets.
In our next issue, we will look at the same data based on the total sales volume per employee.
