It seems a lot of conjecture has been about agent count now that August 17th has passed (and possibly people are starting to look at budgeting for 2025).
My thinking matches something I heard Keith Robinson say on his Real Estate Insider’s Podcast. The way I see the overall agent distribution is that they basically fall into three categories.
Category 1 (10%-20%): Top producers and teams. These agents aren’t going anywhere. There is too much money involved, and they are continuing the post-pandemic trend of gaining market share through efficiencies in process and technology.
Category 2 (10%-20%): Full-time agents. These are agents who need to transact to put food on the table. They are the most vulnerable. These agents need to make deals to survive. The shortage of inventory has hit them the hardest. We might lose these agents to 9-5 jobs, but they may still keep their licenses because it’s relatively cheap to do so. Even if they get a 9-5 job, they would still show up in agent counts.
Category 3 (60%-80%): Part-time agents. These are agents for whom real estate is not the household’s primary income stream. A transaction may simply mean adding more to their discretionary spending, like doing a home upgrade or going on a more elaborate vacation. These agents aren’t going anywhere for the same reasons stated in Category 2.
I’m also hearing from some inside sources that NAR membership has actually gone up in many places. Overall, NAR membership is down less than 3%. That’s far below some of the expectations of a 10% to 15% decrease that I’ve heard from many sources (including myself).
