Casual, Part-Time Agents Not Going Anywhere

Perhaps counter-intuitively, with fewer transactions in the market there are just as many part-time, casual agents as ever – with the majority of producing agents completing less than five transactions in 2024.

Why it matters: The down market is revealing some key truths about the fragmented nature of real estate – and what happens to agent production when there are a million fewer sales to go around.

• In 2024, the average producing agent completed 8 transactions – down from 10 in 2021.
  

• This analysis is based on data provided by CoreLogic , with 85 percent market coverage: 3.4 million sales and 840,000 producing agents in 2024. Each sale kicks off two transactions: one buy-side and one sell-side.

The market continues to be dominated by casual, part-time agents.

• 40 percent of producing agents only did 1–2 transactions in 2024.
  

• If you consider a part-time agent someone who does five or fewer transactions per year, that number rises to 63 percent.

And over time , that ratio isn’t changing – part-time agents aren’t going away.

• Since 2021, the number of agents doing 1–2 transactions per year has increased slightly, while the number of agents doing 6+ transactions has dropped considerably.
  

• There are significantly fewer sales in the market which is disproportionately affecting higher-producing agents; the evidence doesn’t support the theory that causal agents disappear in a down market.

As I’ve said in the past , agents are like cockroaches ; they’re survivors and tend to stick around.

• Even with 25 percent fewer sales in 2024 compared to 2021, there were only 7 percent fewer producing agents.
  

• Keep in mind this data is from the CoreLogic dataset (85 percent of the market), and does not represent the entire market.

The bottom line : Real estate remains a highly fragmented industry, with a lot of agents doing, on average, just a handful of transactions each year.

• And with a shrinking market, there is not a corresponding decline in the number of producing agents; rather, the average number of transactions per agent is dropping.
  

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