LA’s active resi agent pool shrinks 27% as market slows

Los Angeles’ corps of real estate agents is declining — by hundreds of agents — as the market heads into a slowdown.

The number of active agents in the Los Angeles market in the fourth quarter of 2022 was down by 27 percent from the previous year, according to AgentStory, a company that tracks real estate agents and transactions. There were less than 3,500 active agents in Los Angeles in the fourth quarter of 2022, down from 4,800 active agents in the same period in 2021.

Shmuel Tennenhaus, an AgentStory representative, said the study does not count all of the agents hustling in Los Angeles. AgentStory’s data only accounts for agents who have closed deals. Transactions under contract, but not completed, weren’t counted by the study.

The number of active Los Angeles agents also declined from quarter to quarter. There were 4,203 active agents in Los Angeles during the third quarter of 2022.

The AgentStory report also recorded a surge of people working as residential real estate agents during the market’s bonanza year of 2021. In the second quarter of 2021, there were about 5,800 active agents in Los Angeles, which was the zenith for the number of agents closing deals in Los Angeles. The decline from peak to the most recent quarter represents a loss of 40 percent.

AgentStory defines an active agent as any agent that has a listing or co-listing as well as buyer agents who participate in a residential transaction during the quarter. The data accounts for some range throughout each year, as deals ramp up during the second and third quarter of every year, when agents are most active and the market is at its yearly peak.