RE Agents - how is lack of inventory affecting your income?

[JD Martin]

@Russell Brazil @Dawn Brenengen @James Wise @Jonna Weber @David Greene @John Thedford @Nathan Gesner @Joel Owens @Jordan Moorhead @Brie Schmidt and hopefully a whole lot of people that I've missed -

I am curious - how has the lack of inventory affected your RE income? I can see how this can turn out two ways:

1. House prices are super high and everything gets sold, so agents are doing well;

2. Houses are scarcer than hen's teeth, and there's not much to go around so agents are having a rough time of it.

I ran some quick math numbers in my area yesterday and making a whole lot of assumptions (for example, only 40% of all local agents were party to a sale, everything that was available gets sold, etc) the math didn't seem to pencil out very well for agents right now. Houses are selling for a lot more money but there's nothing out there to sell. I asked my agent, who's a broker and part owner of the local KW (which is the firm that I have my RE license with but I'm inactive) and he says that he's doing pretty well but is mostly doing broker stuff and hardly selling anything, partly because there's nothing to sell. I've read a couple of anecdotal stories where agents said they were making minimum wage right now because of the lack of inventory (including one in the WSJ I posted yesterday). I figure that the best agents everywhere are probably still doing well, but I would still like to know how the historically low inventory affects income.

[Garrett Crosby]

Here in Los Angeles and Ventura County - low inventory simply means homes are snatched up quickly, but I've never had a problem showing clients other properties immediately. I do think 2022 will be an interesting year with rising interest rates - but with inflation at all-time highs and low inventory, I also don't see home prices decreasing too much.