2015 Top Brokerage Firms - Finding top agents

[Angela Chen]

Thanks for reading.  I just saw a release of top brokerages by sales volume.  Based on your experience, does the company make a difference on the quality of the agent?  

Would love some advice in how to select the top agents given the 80/20 rule (20% of agents do 80% of the deals).  It is challenging to gauge activity & deal flow by LoopNet /Costar.

[Joel Owens]

These are Macro stats that do not really mean anything.

It's like when someone says they did 10 million in volume but have a team of 10 people.  You really didn't do it all by yourself.

Some of these brokerages are average 1 transaction a year per agent to less.

A lot of these big brokerages stick 3 to 4 agents on a team and pump out selling listings given to them by large REIT's and other sellers.

By choice I work with clients one on one and spend the time with them educating on the process. The other brokers are too busy working for peanuts.

They might take a 10 mill listing at 2% for their side. Then they have 3 agents on the team for a 50/50 split. 200,000 / 3 = 66,667 and the brokerage gets half so 33,333

Some even work for less than that. They try to throw whatever at buyers and quell objections to get the sale for the seller with junk pro-formas. Not all big companies are like this.

Plenty of independent guys like me. I am happy to do deals closely with my clients rather than volume. I tend to make more than the other guys running themselves ragged for volume.

You need to look to your micro market in the niche you want to invest in retail, multifamily, office, industrial, etc. and then seek out  specialist.