Is the 80/20 rule really true?

You’ve heard the statistic – 20% of Realtors do 80% of the business.

Is this true or is it just another sales myth that’s bandied about in the real estate business? A recent blog post by Ted Jones, Chief Economist for Stewart Title reports on a study by the WAV Group that provides some insight to this question.

The research company surveyed about 150 Multiple Listing Services regarding listings and closed transactions for the first half of last year. The accompanying charts show the percentage of agents who had listings in that time period, as well as the percentage with closed transactions.

Certainly some people subscribe to the MLS for reasons other than listing or selling residential properties. This includes commercial Realtors that keep tabs on the residential market, appraisers, or others that use MLS data. However, the 39 percent who had no closings in the first half of 2014 and the 43 percent who had no listings is still remarkably high and indicates that about 40% of MLS subscribers are not listing and selling (for whatever reasons).

Add to this, the fact that another 50% only had from one to ten closings in a six month period, bringing to 89% the total of those who had from zero to ten closings in half a year and you can conclude that the remaining 11% of the agents are doing a high percentage of the business. It’s pretty much the same with listings. Only nine percent of MLS members had ten or more listings in the first half of 2014.

Our conclusion? If we are talking about numbers of transactions, the 80/20 rule may not be far off the mark in real estate.