How Many Homes Does a Realtor Sell a Year, and Should You Care?

You need a great real estate agent to sell your home. To find one, you want to go in knowing all the facts, like: how many homes does a Realtor® sell in a year? With many agents boasting “top producer” or “#1 agent” status in your city, it’s important to understand what’s typical for the industry and how your agent stacks up against their peers.

The truth is: the number of homes an individual agent sells in a year can vary widely. In the United States, there are more than 3 million active real estate licensees and 1.5 million Realtors®, or real estate licensees who’ve taken an extra step to become certified members of the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

Some agents sell a single house per year for their friend, while others have built empires to facilitate a record 7,012 sales annually with sophisticated tech systems. But those are the extremes.

Here’s what industry metrics say is a typical number of sales per year for a Realtor, and why that figure is only one of many performance indicators you should be weighing in your search for the right agent.

Tallying a Realtor’s yearly sales

According to NAR, Realtors completed a median of 10 residential “transaction sides” in 2023. Keep in mind that transaction sides are not a strict measure of homes sold. An agent earns a transaction side when they help either a buyer or a seller close a sale.

That means for every transaction in real estate, there are two sides: one claimed by the agent representing the seller, and one claimed by the agent representing the buyer. If the Realtor represents both buyer and seller, then they would earn two sides.

NAR doesn’t isolate what percentage of “sides” in their calculation represents a Realtor’s median number of homes sold versus homes bought. If we assume it’s about 50/50, for example’s sake, the average Realtor would sell an estimated six homes and help clients buy an estimated six homes per year. In reality, this breakdown varies among Realtors, some of whom may do more listings versus buy-side transactions than others.

Part-timers and hobbyists sell fewer homes

Compared to the high-flying agents on reality TV shows, it might surprise you to learn that Realtors worked a median 35 hours per week in 2023, according to the NAR, and made a median gross income of $55,800. However, these figures also account for Realtors who don’t pursue real estate as a full-time job.

If an agent sells fewer than four homes in a year, they’re likely a hobbyist or part-timer who helps friends and family members now and again. They may treat real estate as an after-work gig, side hustle, or post-retirement activity. Or they may be a full-time agent who is just getting started.

Top producers and teams do more business

There are also a lot of agents who sell more homes than the average — some even in the hundreds. If an agent is selling 50-plus or into the hundreds of homes per year range, you can expect that the agent has help in the form of assistants and transaction coordinators, or in some cases, a full-blown team structure.

“Many times, an agent will show you that they have 150 sales in a year, but they have four other people buying and selling under them,” says Ron Thieme, a Masthope, PA agent who’s been selling homes for over 37 years.

In a real estate team structure, it’s not uncommon for the manager, who oversees all transactions, to count each one towards their total transaction sides. So, the high sales number could be a reflection of a seasoned agent who now runs a team.

If a seller chooses to work with a team’s leader, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll work with that leader directly for the whole transaction. The leader will likely have a few agents on their team who help to handle much of the day-to-day work.

Some agents sell fewer homes at a higher price point

In measuring the success of an agent, the number of sales — or if you want to count buyer deals as well, then transaction sides — is only a part of the picture. Realtors get paid on commission. Listing agents and buyer’s agents each collect a 3% commission on average, and their respective brokers also take a portion of the commission.

But the more valuable the home, the more a real estate agent is going to make per sale. In Thieme’s second-homes market of Honesdale, Pennsylvania; known for its recreational opportunities to boat, hike, and raft; homes range anywhere from $100,000 or less to $2 million plus.

An agent who is geared toward the higher priced lakefront homes in his area will have fewer sales in many cases, he says. Whereas another agent is going to have to sell a lot of $100,000 houses to make an equivalent amount of money.

For that reason: “An agent might sell 20 homes and be very successful as opposed to somebody who sells 50-80 homes,” Thieme explains. “So I would say that the determining factor on how many actual sales somebody does is the price point. The larger, higher priced sales sometimes require a lot more work.”