He's #1, She's #1, Everyone is top 1%! Heck, even I was #1, once.
How is that possible? How can everyone be #1?
Well here is how it works.
1) Consolidation with Teams
This is where a Realtor becomes a "Team." or skips the "team" title but has others working under them.
The agents within this team are instructed to funnel all their deals through one agent (when an agent sells a home, they have to enter in an Agent ID#, instead of giving credit to the actual agent, they put in the AgentID of the team leader).
Why would they do that? Because it helps for marketing. Now each one of those agents, including the one at the top, can all say "#1 Realtor" or "Top 5 Realtor in Virginia."
The scamming of the system got so bad that NVAR, the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors stopped giving out awards or titles of greatness. So no more "#3 NVAR Realtor." I think this is great that they stopped this gaming of rankings.
The only REAL way to rank agents would be the 1099 test. He/She with the largest tax return 1099 is the winner!
2) Asterisks. #1 within a smaller group
Then if somebody can't be
#1 in America, they then try and be
#1 in Virginia. If that doesn't work, try
#1 in Arlington. Still no good, then
#1 in your office. Then types of homes
#1 in the neighborhood
#1 in volume (total dollar amount)
#1 is sales (total number of transactions, usually for lower priced homes)
Then you go back up
#1 Firm in America (even if you are just an agent with 3 deals, you can piggyback)
Well what about the Top 1% or Top 5% claims?
Well the thing is, there are about 1 million Realtors in America. The average Realtor makes about $17,000. But the problem with averages is it included weekend warriors. People who might do a deal a year for a relatives. So saying you are a "Top 5% of Realtors nationwide" means "I am within the top 50,000 full time Realtors." I guess that doesn't sound as sexy.
I even did it!
When I started it was kinda hard to compete with all these #1 Realtors so, after my first year I took the title of 2003 NVAR Rookie of the Year (that means #1, well actually they first gave the award to another person. They didn't believe my #s were possible since they were 3x the next Rookie!)
I then went on to be the #1 Agent in the United States under 30, and I did so in my first year! Did I have the highest 1099? Nope. So how did I do it? Well remember all my blog posts on rebating? You know, where I say "I used to Rebate, but then aI got good." Well I was also doing flat fee listings for $100. You'd pay me $100, I'd put your house on the MLS, and when it sold, it counted toward my sales numbers.
Today?
Since 2005 I stopped filling out the paperwork to get my "Million Dollar Producer (oh by the way, whose don't mean the Realtor made $1m, it means they sold two $500k homes). Also the agent within my firm take credit for all their own deals. No padding of my numbers.
And now FranklyMLS.com is working toward making this data public. No other site does this. Now it will show the name of the buyer agent on closed deals. Soon it will separate who was the buyer agent and who was the listing agent.
Bottom line, don't pick an agent just because they are "#1" at something. And as I have seen a few smaller firms claim "We aren't #1, you are"
Written by the #1 Real Estate Blogger in America* Frank Borges LL0SA- Broker FranklyRealty.com
Piggyback photo by Elston
* Not really
(Please report typos)
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