Identifying The Leading 100

Real Trends REAL Trends has been The Trusted Source of news, analysis, and information on the residential brokerage industry since 1987. They are a privately-held publishing, consulting, and communications company based in Castle Rock, Colorado.

REAL Trends has been ranking individual and team real estate sales professionals for 11 years. REAL Trends The Thousand, as advertised in The Wall Street Journal, features a list of 1,000 high-producing sales professionals in the categories of top individuals by transaction sides, top individuals by transaction volume, top teams by transaction sides and top teams by transaction volume. In addition, REAL Trends ranked the top 50 teams by average sales price. REAL Trends America’s Best Agents is a separate ranking of sales professionals and teams by state and local area. Only those who met REAL Trends’ minimum qualifications to apply for The
Thousand were considered.

Methodology

The application process begins in January when we send applications to those who qualified in past years. Then, we contact national real estate brands so that they may encourage sales associates and teams to apply. We also work directly with all brokerage firms ranked on the REAL Trends 500 and Up-and-Comers and virtually every local and state Association of Realtors®. We invite each of these parties to either submit qualified candidates to us or to let us know who may be qualified, and then we reach out to them directly.

All production listed is based on the prior calendar year’s closed residential sales. We do not include leases or commercial sales. These
numbers may include off-market listings. While we list the city and state of the main office that the sales professional or team is located, the sales included in the numbers may come from various other markets if the sales professional does business across multiple MLSs, cities, and/or states. We require independent, third-party verification for every sales professional and team. These take many forms, but the source for the verification must be independent of the sales professional or team that submits an application. We make no exceptions to this rule.

All submissions are verified by one of the following ways:

  • The local or state Realtor® association which the sales professional or sales team has a membership, Signed letter from the broker/owner (Note: broker/owners cannot sign off on their own submissions),
  • Copy of 1099 or business tax return for 2015 (please black out any confidential information, i.e. date of birth, social security number, etc.), or The national network which the sales professional or sales team has its affiliation.

Those ranked in the Top 20 may be required to provide an additional, second form of verification. Applicants that do not send in
verification will be removed from the rankings.

Minimum qualifications to apply

  • An individual must have closed at least 50 sides or $20 million in sales volume.
  • A team must have closed at least 75 sides or $30 million in closed sales volume.

Individual sales professionals vs. teams

  • Individual sales professional: an individual who is employed in residential real estate sales and who does not share commissions or sales volume for the purposes of award with any other person.
  • Team: two or more licensed sales associates, regardless of whether they are independent contractors or employees of a team, who combine sales for awards or commission sharing in any fashion. This includes those who refer to themselves as partners or any other term. Employees or independent contractors employed by a team in non-selling activities are not counted as a member of a team.
  • An applicant may only submit as an individual or team, not for both.
  • REAL Trends carefully reviews all websites and other sources to ensure the accuracy of the placement of individuals and teams.
  • REAL Trends reaches out to more than 2,000 separate U.S. realty organizations in an attempt to reach every sales professional who might qualify to be ranked on this list, it is highly likely that there are some fine real estate sales professionals who are not listed here. Some may not be here because they did not want to apply and others because the word of this ranking did not reach them.

About REAL Trends

Residential real estate leaders look to REAL Trends for timely and trusted information and analysis through our monthly newsletter, news updates, conference, and publications. In addition to creating research studies, we are a leading provider of high-level business consulting services to the residential real estate industry. REAL Trends provides a wide range of advisory services to an international clientele of local, regional, and national real estate organizations. Areas of expertise include technology, operational analysis, valuations, merger and acquisition advisory services, consumer and business research and strategic planning. www.realtrends.com.