That’s right, everyone, it’s awards time in the real estate industry!
This is an exciting time of the year for agents as we are recognized by our brokers and get to compare our performance to our peers. The focus is usually on the overall production, or the total value of all the property sold during the year. Once the calculations are done, there will be ads in the real estate section of the paper touting our amazing achievements (snark intended).
Adding to the fun is that there are many different ways to tally production. The challenge for each individual agent is to find just the right combination of criteria to make them the top performer; Numero Uno. Some people like to look at the total volume of sales in specific towns, so any deals done outside of those towns don’t count. Other agents will only consider listings. Still others may filter out the agent teams to only consider individual agents. Or count the number of deals instead of the dollar production. The game can be complicated.
Like everyone else, we’re curious to see where we rank. It’s data, after all, and we love looking at data. Our peers are the agents based in West Hartford. We count all of their deals that appear in the Multiple Listing Service, no matter where in the state the property is located. It’s not a perfect measure since sometimes agents share deals, but it’s the official public record. Finally, we do not separate the teams from individuals since the reality is that we’re all competing against each other.
After pulling data from the MLS (deemed reliable, but not guaranteed), we found that there were over 300 real estate agents based in West Hartford that did at least one deal in 2009. Note that we only included the 10 top offices in town – the big franchises plus smaller offices that have a big agent. There are apparently 45 real estate offices in West Hartford, but most of the 35 excluded offices have a single broker/agent.
The chart below shows how many agents finished the year with production in specific ranges. For example, there were 10 agents that finished the year with total production of between $4 million and $5 million.
The chart shows that most of the agents based in West Hartford sold less than $3 million in property last year, and nearly half sold less than $1 million. At the upper end – the “Top Producers” – the results were very spread out. The true Number One sold just under $22 million, then there were four agents in the mid-to-upper teens, two in the $11 millions, and then the chart takes over from there. In general the top producers are consistently the same agents, though the exact rankings may change from year to year.
We finished in 17th place, out of 325, officially selling about $7.7 million. Even though we’re not Number One, we’re pretty high up on the list and are happy with our performance. Especially since we believe our business is still in the growth phase as we work to continue building a brand and extending our reach.
As an added bonus, we’ve done well enough to start making claims about being Number One! So let’s see, which title would be most impressive…
Number One on Kenyon Street in Hartford – both in number of sales and total production!
Hmmm, kinda specific, maybe we can do better.
Number One West Hartford agent that had a baby last year!
Once again that might be a little too specific – how many West Hartford agents had babies last year? Not many. Hmmm … okay, here’s the winner …
Number One West Hartford agent under 40!