How many is too many?

I was recently talking with someone about the real estate market. She was telling me that she is chronically hearing from agents about how little business they are doing. As the discussion progressed about how there were too many agents for too little business. She asked me, what I thought. How many transactions should an agent be doing?

Off the cuff, I said I thought it would be best for consumers if most agents did at least 20 closed transactions per year. This volume ensures that they are active in the market and as such are able to stay up on trends. This is just best for consumers. It isn’t good for consumers to represented by an agent that does one transaction a year.

So…I was thinking about that statistic and wanted to check and see based on the current level of closed sales how many agents would that be to hit the 20 a year mark. I was a little shocked by the number…

For the WVMLS, there are currently 1,971 members. So far this year there have been 5,210 properties sold on the MLS. Now if you take that number times two (since there is an agent on each side of the transaction) that gives you 10,420 sides for agent representation.

If we stick to my ideal mark of 20 closed transactions per year on average, then that would leave you with

521 agents to complete that number of sides of transactions. With our current numbers agents are averaging only 5 transaction sides per agent…

So…the question is how many is too many?

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