Even with soaring home prices, agents across America are making less money.
Amid rising prices and a housing supply shortage, agents and brokers made fewer deals and took home less money, according to a National Association of Realtors survey published by Inman. Median gross income for agents, according to NAR, fell 6 percent to $39,800 last year.
Meanwhile, median brokerage sales volume dipped to $1.8 million from $1.9 million in 2016, despite record-high home prices, the report said.
“Limited inventory continues to plague many housing markets in the United States. For the fifth year in a row, the difficulty finding the right property has surpassed the difficulty in obtaining mortgage financing as the most cited reason limiting potential clients,” Inman said, citing NAR’s report.
But the numbers varied by job type, experience and working hours. Most Realtors were sales agents specializing in residential brokerage. Median gross income for sales agents fell 12.8 percent to $29,440 in 2017.
Of those included in the report, 35 percent were compensated under a fixed commission split, under 100 percent. A quarter of agents had a graduated commission split, which increases with productivity — and 14 percent had a capped commission split, which rises to 100 percent after a predetermined threshold, the report said. [Inman] — Meenal Vamburkar