by Leah Curtis | May 12, 2025 | Industry, News Feed
In the real estate industry, the path to success can look very different to different people — from selling a record number of homes to breaking into the luxury sector to building a referral-driven business because clients can’t say enough good things about you and the service you provide.
Regardless of how they achieve high producer status, best-in-class agents show up each day with an unwavering drive to excel — and a determined mindset to get them there. Here are three qualities the vast majority of top real estate agents have in common, according to REMAX:
1. Top producers are trustworthy
Trust is the backbone of business. It’s that simple.
When people trust you, they’re going to choose you over the competition. And they’re likely to recommend your business to their friends and family, too. This level of trust is a product of having a robust skillset, offering helpful expertise, communicating clearly and delivering excellent customer service.
Maintaining a reputation of trust is cornerstone to business for top producers. What’s great: those at REMAX brokerages have the facts to back it. A consumer survey found that REMAX has the most trusted real estate agents in the U.S.1 and Canada2.
2. Top producers are productive
Becoming the best in the business doesn’t happen overnight. It’s the outcome of perpetually boosting productivity, often leading to an impressive track record of wins that reinforce an entrepreneur’s experience and longevity in the business.
Top producers also join brokerages with a culture that supports this productivity — and places them in proximity of fellow go-getters who collaborate and help each other grow. That’s one of the many reasons agents join REMAX. In fact, REMAX agents at large U.S. brokerages, on average, outsell the competition 2-to-13.
3. Top producers are professional
A business foundation of professionalism is built through myriad avenues, from how you market your business to how you connect with new customers to how you keep in touch with former ones. Top agents exude professionalism in everything they do — and they lean into resources that support it.
REMAX agents, for instance, leverage the power of a household-name brand people know and trust on a global scale. And they get creative with exclusive REMAX tools that empower users to customize professionally crafted marketing materials and put assets in front of the right people at the right time. An example: the ever-expanding MAX/Tech® powered by BoldTrail platform, a tech solution designed to streamline an agent’s workflow and increase their productivity, complete with a comprehensive CRM, presentation tools, AI capabilities and more.
Top producers stay curious, too, and never stop sharpening their skills and learning new facets of real estate. Through REMAX University® — the brand’s digital education hub — as well as mastermind sessions and events, REMAX agents continually gain timely knowledge and use that expertise to help people turn their real estate goals into reality.
With a network of over 145,000 agents and a presence in over 110 countries and territories, the REMAX brand is home to trusted, productive and professional top producers leading the way in real estate. To learn more about REMAX, a business that builds businesses, visit join.remax.com.
1 Voted most trusted Real Estate Agency brand by American shoppers based on the BrandSpark® American Trust Study, years 2022-2025 and 2019.
2 Voted most trusted Real Estate Agency brand by Canadian shoppers based on the BrandSpark® Canadian Trust Study, years 2021-2025, 2019, and 2017.
3 Transaction sides per agent calculated by RE/MAX based on 2024 data from RealTrends Verified Brokerage Rankings, citing 2024 transaction sides for the 1,256 participating U.S. brokerages that closed 500 transaction sides, excluding 43 who did not report active licensees. RE/MAX average: 11.9. Competitors: 5.3.
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by Leah Curtis | Apr 10, 2025 | Industry, News Feed
Bigger. Better. Bolder. Inman Connect is heading to San Diego. Join thousands of real estate pros, connect with the power of the Inman Community, and gain insights from hundreds of leading minds shaping the industry. If you’re ready to grow your business and invest in yourself, this is where you need to be. Go BIG in San Diego!
Of all real estate accolades, I think the Rookie of the Year Award is the most inspiring. That’s because we can all remember when we started in the industry.
I don’t think it matters if you’ve been in the business one year or 40 years, we always have something to learn from each other. That’s why I sat down with Tyson Hansen, our brokerage’s 2024 Rookie of the Year, to learn more about his success playbook.
Check out our conversation below.
Vidal: You caught the real estate bug when you bought your first home and started buying, fixing, selling and managing properties. What ignited your passion?
Hansen: Every time I met someone who had achieved true financial freedom — working because they wanted to, not because they had to — I noticed a common thread: They all owned real estate. That really stuck with me.
Real estate is one of the most time-tested, reliable ways to build wealth, and I knew I wanted to be part of that. I became obsessed with learning everything I could and owning as much of it as possible.
Vidal: You had a successful career in finance — close to 17 years. How did that help your transition to a career in real estate? What was it like to leave a steady paycheck behind?
Hansen: Growing up, I was always told, like so many of us, “Get a good education, find a secure job with benefits and a retirement plan.” And I did that. I had a great job in government finance, and while there were parts I enjoyed, deep down I knew it wasn’t where I belonged.
I’d go to conferences and look around the room thinking, this just isn’t my crowd. Eventually, I had to face the truth: I wasn’t doing what God put me on this earth to do. Once I realized that, I knew it was time to make a change — and I went all in. Burn the boats.
Vidal: What was pivotal to your success in your first year in real estate?
Hansen: Fear can be a powerful motivator — especially when you’ve got a wife and four kids depending on you and you’ve just walked away from your steady paycheck. About a month after leaving my job, I partnered up with my investment buddy, Donavan. We already owned several properties together and had flipped homes, so we knew we worked well as a team.
We figured instead of competing against each other, we’d team up and make 1+1=3. That partnership was huge for me. Having someone to grind with, hold you accountable, and push you to be better every day? That kind of energy is contagious, and it definitely helped shape my first year.
Vidal: What are your strengths and weaknesses?
Hansen: One of my biggest strengths is that I have a hard time sitting still. I struggle to even watch a full movie or game because I feel like I should be doing something productive. That drive keeps me moving forward and makes it hard to end a day feeling like I didn’t accomplish anything.
On the flip side, I wrestle with time management. I get distracted easily — classic shiny object syndrome — and I’m a master of creative avoidance. If I have a big task I don’t want to tackle, suddenly I have to sweep the porch or take my truck to the carwash.
It’s also hard for me to delegate, which isn’t ideal when you’re trying to grow and scale.
Vidal: What is something you are passionate about outside of real estate?
Hansen: My wife and I love to travel and experience new things together. We’ve got a trip planned this year to Paris and Rome — can’t wait! It’s something we both really look forward to and prioritize.
Vidal: What’s on your vision board?
Hansen: I don’t use a traditional vision “board,” but I’m big on visualization. I actually write my goals out in a letter to myself — as a story. I include what life looks like if I reach them, but I also describe what life might be like if I don’t. It’s a powerful motivator.
I read it at least once a week to keep myself focused. When I look in the mirror I want to see someone I’m proud of — strong, driven and dialed in. In my visualization, I don’t just show up – I own the moment. I win.
Vidal: What advice do you have for people just starting out in this business?
Hansen: Find someone — or a group — that will hold you accountable. Whether it’s a teammate, a coach, a mastermind group or a mentor, that accountability can make all the difference.
And treat it like a real job. Show up at your desk every day, ready to work, just like you would anywhere else.
The biggest secret? Be consistent. It’s the small, repeated actions that compound into something amazing over time.
Tyson Hansen of ERA Brokers Consolidated in Richfield, Utah purchased his first townhome in 2009, a pivotal moment that ignited his love of real estate. After years of buying, fixing, selling and managing properties, in 2024 Tyson took a leap of faith, leaving his position as Richfield City’s finance director to pursue real estate full-time.
Alex Vidal is the president of ERA Real Estate.
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by Leah Curtis | Aug 5, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
By its definition, real estate is a high-churn business, according to Mike DelPrete, which offers the potential for massive shifts in brokerage revenue year-to-year.
This article was shared here with permission from Mike DelPrete for Inman Intel, a data and research arm of Inman offering deep insights and market intelligence on the business of residential real estate and proptech. Subscribe today.
Real estate is a high-churn business, with over 144,000 agents changing brokerages in the past 12 months.
Why it matters: For brokerages, this highlights the critical importance of recruiting and retention — and knowing which types of agents are the most likely to move.
Context: The joke is that the median number of houses sold per agent each year is zero — and the truth isn’t too far away.
- Approximately half (47 percent) of the 1.4 million agents in this analysis sold zero houses in the past 12 months.
- These non-producers may be on teams, which was true for about 26 percent of agents in 2018, according to The National Association of Realtors.
Agent churn is when an agent changes brokerage; it does not include agents new to or exiting the industry, and the time period is the last 12 months (June 2023 – June 2024).
- Including non-producers, 10 percent — or around 144,000 agents — changed brokerage in the past 12 months.
- And lower producers in the $1 – $10 million range were the most likely to churn.
Excluding non-producers, some of whom were part of a team, 14 percent of the remaining “active” agents changed brokerages in the past 12 months.
- It’s notable that the highest producing agents, $50 million and above, churn at higher than 10 percent — a significant shift in revenue (and a recruitment and retention opportunity).
Tenure matters: The longer an agent has been in the industry, the less likely they are to change their brokerage.
- The newest agents — those in the industry between 12 and 23 months — were the most likely to switch brokerage, while agents in the industry 12+ years were the least likely to change.
Agent churn is also correlated to office size.
- The largest brokerage offices, with over 500 agents, are churn machines with the highest percentage of agents joining and leaving; agents are 33 percent more likely to leave a big office vs. a small one.
- Keep in mind, the publicly reported agent counts of brokerages obfuscate true churn; a 2 percent increase in agent count may be the result of 12 percent joining and 10 percent leaving.
The bottom line: Any business forecasting a minimum of 10 percent churn of its most productive employees or its total revenue is in for a challenging year ahead.
- By its very nature, real estate is a high-churn business, which represents a massive shift in potential brokerage revenue each year.
- This is a risk and an opportunity — the constant movement of agents means that brokerages can’t stand still and always need to be offering the best proposition to current agents and prospective recruits.
Mike DelPrete is a strategic advisor and global expert in real estate tech, including Zavvie, an iBuyer offer aggregator. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
by Leah Curtis | Jul 30, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
FHA premium cuts spur growth, but borrowers with stellar credit can still do better taking out conventional Fannie Mae- or Freddie Mac-eligible mortgages with private mortgage insurance.
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Although they helped nearly 800,000 Americans buy a home in 2023, private mortgage insurers lost market share to FHA and VA programs last year — a trend that continued into the first quarter of 2024.
In the wake of the 2007-09 housing crash and Great Recession, FHA or VA loans were often the best bet for many homebuyers who hadn’t saved up much for a down payment.
But private mortgage insurers — who provide a backup to lenders that’s required by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when homebuyers put less than 20 percent down — have been working to claw back market share for a decade.
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For a time, increased FHA premiums made private mortgage insurance the cheaper option for many borrowers. Programs from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that allow low-income homebuyers to buy homes with as little as 3 percent down have also helped private mortgage insurers attract more first-time homebuyers.
First-time homebuyers accounted for close to two-thirds (64 percent) of the loans backed by private mortgage insurance in 2023, up from 61 percent in 2022, according to a report released Tuesday by U.S. Mortgage Insurers (USMI).
Close to one in five borrowers (18 percent) who depended on private mortgage insurance to get approved last year made only a 3 percent down payment, up from 11 percent in 2020, the report said.
Seth Appleton
“Without private mortgage insurance, far too many buyers would remain on the sidelines instead of building intergenerational wealth and working towards the American Dream of homeownership,” said USMI President Seth Appleton in a statement.
(USMI is an industry association representing five of the six active U.S. mortgage insurers — Enact, Essent, MGIC, National MI, and Radian.)
After insuring $283 billion in new mortgage originations last year, private mortgage insurers were standing behind close to $1.6 trillion in home loans — including $1.4 trillion in mortgages guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
FHA and VA take back market share
Losses on claims in the wake of the 2007-2009 Great Recession made it difficult for private mortgage insurers to write new policies.
However, after seeing their share of the market for insured mortgages drop below 20 percent in 2009 and 2010, private mortgage insurers gradually reclaimed some of their business from FHA and VA loan programs.
From 2008 to 2013, annual premiums on FHA loans rose from 50 basis points to 135 basis points as the Obama administration coped with losses that led to a $1.69 billion bailout of FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund in 2013.
Private mortgage insurers steadily grew their share of the mortgage insurance market back to nearly 50 percent in 2022.
But as the economy improved and the FHA program recovered, the Obama administration was able to cut annual FHA premiums by 50 basis points in 2015. Another 30 basis point cut announced by the Biden administration last year made FHA mortgages more attractive than Fannie and Freddie mortgages “for most borrowers putting down less than 5 percent,” according to analysts at the Urban Institute.
During the first quarter of 2024, private mortgage insurers saw their market share drop to 40.1 percent of insured mortgages, down from 47.3 percent in Q1 2023, according to data compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance and the Urban Institute.
Of the $145 billion in mortgages originated with some kind of insurance during Q1 2024, private mortgage insurers still backed the biggest chunk of loans, totaling $58.2 billion.
But FHA’s share of the market grew from 29.9 percent in Q1 2023 — before annual premiums were slashed by $678 million a year — to 36.4 percent in Q1 2024.
Analysts at the Urban Institute calculate that borrowers with a FICO score of less than 740 will find FHA financing to be a better deal when putting 3.5 percent down.
But borrowers with FICO scores of 740 and above will do better taking out a conventional Fannie- or Freddie-eligible mortgage with private mortgage insurance.
Those calculations reflect not only last year’s reduction in FHA premiums but changes to upfront fees that lenders pay when selling mortgages to Fannie and Freddie that were designed to help low- and moderate-income borrowers, the Urban Institute said.
One remaining drawback of FHA loans for borrowers making down payments of less than 10 percent is that the only way to get out of paying mortgage insurance premiums is to refinance out of their FHA mortgages or sell their homes.
Mortgage trade groups have urged the Department of Housing and Urban Development to ditch the “life of loan” premium payment requirement, but so far HUD remains intent on rebuilding FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance fund for the next downturn.
Having slashed annual FHA mortgage insurance premiums by 35 percent last year — and with 2024 FHA loan limits rising to a minimum of $498,257 in affordable markets and up to $1.72 million in high-cost states like Alaska and Hawaii — total insurance in force is growing faster than reserves.
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Email Matt Carter
by Leah Curtis | Jul 22, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
The company celebrated during a live “growth call” with leaders from more than 1,000 franchisees in the U.S. and Canada. Nearly 150 KW agents have earned more than $1 million in lifetime profit share.
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Keller Williams logged a milestone Monday: The major real estate franchisor has shared more than $2 billion in profits with its agents since the program’s launch in 1987.
The company, which has 174,000 agents, celebrated at 11 a.m. Central on a live “Growth Call” with top leaders from its more than 1,000 franchisees, also known as market centers, in the U.S. and Canada.
“This achievement is a quantifiable testament to our strong, growth-minded culture,” said Mark Willis, KW CEO and president, in a statement.
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Keller Williams also shared on Monday that between Jan. 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, its franchisees gave more than $148 million in profits to their affiliated agents. In a statement, Gary Keller, KW’s co-founder and executive chairman, said the profit share program allows franchisees to treat their agents as partners and allows agents “to build their businesses inside our franchise model, which is as powerful as if they owned a brokerage themselves.”
“This profit share milestone results from how we think of our relationship with our business partners,” Keller added. “Profit share is an equal opportunity, unequal reward. Those that put in effort will get the lion’s share of the results.”
Keller Williams is a private company, which means it is not obligated to share any financial information publicly. The franchisor is a defendant in several antitrust commission lawsuits and settled the cases earlier this year for $70 million.
Although that settlement has received final approval from a district court, several homesellers are appealing that decision, alleging the payout is far too low and objecting to the deal’s release of franchisees from liability without requiring them to pay anything to the people they allegedly harmed or change anything about their practices.
Keller Williams’ profit share program specifically is also the subject of multiple lawsuits due to a now-scrapped plan to slash profit sharing for defecting agents. The agents behind the suits alleged the plan would have amounted to breach of contract and unjust enrichment on the part of the company. Those suits are ongoing.
According to the company, through June 30, 2024, 137 KW agents have earned more than $1 million in lifetime profit share while 386 agents have earned more than $500,000. Tens of thousands of agents have earned at least five figures in profit share in that time frame:
- 3,077 KW agents have gotten more than $100,000 in lifetime profit share
- 6,648 KW agents have gotten more than $50,000 in lifetime profit share
- 28,827 KW agents have gotten more than $10,000 in lifetime profit share
“Profit share is the engine of our culture,” said Shawn Rawls, an Atlanta-based KW agent, in a statement. “It gives everybody a seat at the table.”
Through Keller Williams’ current profit sharing model, associates who are with the company for more than seven years receive a portion of their former market center’s profit for life. Market centers take slightly more than 50 percent of their profit, then sponsored associates split up the rest.
The model works like a pyramid, with each associate taking 50 percent of that profit, then the rest being split among their sponsoring associate, and that associate’s sponsoring associate and so on, up to seven levels.
“Each of these programs are set in motion when an associate joins a Keller Williams office and names one person as the individual primarily responsible for bringing them to the company,” a white paper from Keller Williams describing the model states. “It may not have been the first person or the last person they talked to about Keller Williams.
“It may be someone from their Market Center, or it could be someone from another region, province, or country,” the paper continues. “It is the person who was most impactful on their decision to join the company.”
According to KW, agents can designate a beneficiary to receive their profit share distributions when they die.
“Profit share is a legacy that you can leave,” said Jessica Starr, a Simsbury, Connecticut-based KW agent, in a statement. “You can leave it to your loved ones, or you can leave it to a trust.”
Email Andrea V. Brambila.
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