Guinness World Record-Holding Agent Breaks $2.2 Billion Mark
Ben Caballero, the first Guinness World Record holder for home sales who was recently featured in a REAL Trends podcast, broke his world record for an individual real estate agent, selling 5,793 homes totaling $2,270,911,643 in a single year. That’s according to data from local MLSs of the Houston Association of REALTORS®, North Texas Real Estate Information Systems, San Antonio Board of REALTORS® and the Austin Board of REALTORS®.
Ben Caballero won the Guinness World Record in 2018 for real estate sales.
Ranked as the No. 1 real estate agent for nearly a decade by REAL Trends for both total sales and number of transactions, Caballero also listed an additional 668 homes for brokerages owned by home builders for an additional sales volume of $228,992,475. His combined real estate sales for the year totaled $2.499 billion with 6,461 homes sold, all in the state of Texas.
“Texas is the world’s greatest housing market and one of the best economies in the world,” said Caballero. “It’s said everything is bigger in Texas. Well, this number is so big even I’m little surprised by it — and delighted. But this may well be a record that lasts a year or two,” he said, noting that 2019’s homes sales in Texas are showing signs of leveling off.
Ben Caballero is the broker-owner of HomesUSA.com®, based in Addison, Texas. With his HomesUSA.com platform he manages MLS listings for more than 60 builders in Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. Caballero is the number one ranked real estate agent on REAL Trends’ definitive “The Thousand” list, as publish in The Wall Street Journal for both number of home sales and total annual dollar volume.
Significantly, Ben Caballero, in addition to his individual record, is the only individual real estate agent ever to surpass the total production of highest ranked real estate teams on “The Thousand” list, as measured by total sales transactions (sides) and total transaction volume, as verified by REAL Trends. In 2017 Ben Caballero sold more than twice as many homes in both dollar volume and number of homes than those teams that appear on the most recent list. The REAL Trends list for 2018 sales production is expected to be publish this June.
To put Caballero’s 2018 numbers in perspective: Ben sold an average of more than 100 homes a week – nearly 16 homes a day, every single day of the year, and almost three home sales every business hour.
The First Billion Dollar Agent becomes the First 2-Billion Dollar Agent
In 2016, Caballero became the first real estate agent in America personally responsible for more than $1 billion in home sales. He sold 3,556 homes totaling $1.444 billion and that production landed him the title of a Guinness World Record holder last year. He holds the official title for “Most annual home sales transactions through MLS by an individual sell side real estate agent.”
Unlike most top-producing agents who sell multimillion-dollar mansions to celebrities in Beverly Hills and Malibu or to Wall Street titans in Manhattan, Caballero home sales are to everyday people in Texas. His business serves builders selling homes in communities throughout Austin, Houston, San Antonio, as well as his hometown market of Dallas-Ft. Worth.
By the numbers
Caballero’s total sales transactions for his builder clients in four Texas markets in 2018 was up 21 percent n the last year, from 4,799 sales in 2017 to 5,793 sales in 2018. His total sales volume increased 19 percent, totaling $2,270,911,643 in 2018, up from $1,905,970,827 in 2017. His average sales price for 2018 was $392,446.
For the second year in a row, he has been the only individual agent ever to sell more than $1 billion in home sales within a single market. Last year, Caballero sold 3,496 homes in the Dallas-Ft. Worth market, up from 3,035 homes he sold in 2017. His total sales volume for Dallas-Ft. Worth in 2018 was $1,384,874,852, up from $1,200,477,303 in 2017. The average home price in Dallas-Ft. Worth Caballero sold was $392,009.
In Houston, he sold more than one thousand homes (1,022) in 2018, with sales totaling $401,942,780. Caballero also sold 923 homes in Austin last year, with sales totaling $362,063,283. In San Antonio, he sold 288 homes, with sales totaling $96,464,314.
How does Caballero do it?
Through the HomesUSA.com platform Caballero invented, he leverages online technology to achieve his top-ranking sales volume.
HomesUSA.com’s cloud-based listing management and marketing platform streamlines the MLS listing process and speeds up the sales process for homebuilders. It allows builders to provide more accurate data to consumers while also increasing a builder’s ability to market new home listings to real estate agents.
