Weekly Real Estate News
Real estate agents representing approximately $14.4 billion in annualized sales production changed brokerages during the third quarter of 2026, according to a new analysis from Recruiting Insight and Lone Wolf Technologies.
The research was formally announced October 20 at 8 p.m. Eastern and covers brokerage movements through September 30. Its results underscore how agent retention, team dynamics and recruiting costs are reshaping competition.
Colleague departures predict additional moves
The study reviewed closing records for 109,176 producing agents and $688.6 billion in annualized transaction volume across four large multiple listing service markets, supplemented by 200 hours of exit interviews.
It estimates that approximately one in eight producing agents changes brokerages annually. The top 10% of agents who moved accounted for 41% of the production that changed firms, illustrating the outsized financial impact of losing a small number of highly productive professionals.
One finding challenges traditional recruiting assumptions: agents whose production fell by at least 25% were not more likely to leave. Instead, the study found that when an office loses at least 20% of its agents to competing firms, those remaining were 1.9 times as likely to depart.
Recruiting Insight also reported that 35 out of 100 newly recruited agents recorded no closing in the quarter after joining. That figure is not necessarily evidence that all 35 failed; closings can lag a move and agents’ pipelines vary.
What brokerage leaders can learn
The results suggest that office stability, management support and relationships among colleagues may be important retention indicators. For brokerage owners, losing a productive team can carry a second-order cost if other agents follow.
The findings should not be presented as a complete national census. They derive from four MLS markets, and the analysis combines transaction records with interviews. The report’s estimated annual movement rate may differ in other markets and brokerage models.
For recruiting executives, the central takeaway is that production alone is an incomplete measure of an agent’s likelihood of moving. Leaders should examine office-level departures and support needs before turnover accelerates.
Source: Recruiting Insight and Lone Wolf, October 20, 2026.
