How Many Homes Does the Average Realtor Sell Per Year?
Venbit TeamUpdated July 24, 20267 min readThe short answer
The National Association of Realtors puts the median at 10 transaction sides for 2024. A side is earned by representing either the buyer or the seller, so 10 sides is roughly 5 homes sold and 5 purchases assisted rather than 10 homes sold. NAR's 2025 figure has since fallen to 9 sides. Median is the honest figure here, because averages are distorted by a small number of very high producers.
Key takeaways
- ✓NAR's 2024 median is 10 transaction sides per Realtor, not 10 homes sold.
- ✓A transaction has two sides, so a single sale can appear in two agents' counts.
- ✓Ten sides works out to roughly five listings sold and five buyer purchases assisted.
- ✓NAR's 2025 figure fell to 9 sides, so the trend is downward. Check the year on any number you compare against.
- ✓Use the median, not the average. A small number of very high producers pull the mean well above what a typical agent experiences.
- ✓Older articles still quote a median of 12, which was the figure for 2019 and 2021, not a current benchmark.
This is the most commonly misquoted benchmark in real estate, and the error is not small. The headline number gets repeated as homes sold when it measures something different, and the gap between the two readings is close to a factor of two.
Here is what the figure actually counts, what it converts to in homes, and why the median is the only version worth benchmarking against.
The benchmark
Per Realtor, per year, as reported by the National Association of Realtors. The unit is transaction sides, which is where most of the confusion originates.
| Measure | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| NAR median, 2024 | 10 transaction sides | The authoritative benchmark |
| Converted to homes, roughly | About 5 sold, 5 purchases assisted | Assuming a near even split |
| NAR median, 2025 | 9 transaction sides | The most recent figure, and lower than 2024 |
| Older figure still circulating | 12 transaction sides | The 2019 and 2021 medians, not current |
| Per month, at the median | Under one side | The pace most agents actually work at |
●Sides are not homes
A transaction side is earned by representing either the buyer or the seller. Every completed sale therefore produces two sides, one for each agent. So NAR's 2024 median of 10 sides is roughly 5 homes sold and 5 purchases assisted, not 10 homes sold. Articles that report it as 10 homes are overstating the typical agent's volume by close to double.
Source: National Association of Realtors, member transaction data
Insist on the median
Real estate production is one of the most skewed distributions in professional services. A small proportion of agents and teams complete a large share of all transactions, while a long tail completes very few, and some licensed agents complete none at all in a given year.
That shape makes the average actively misleading. The mean gets pulled upward by high producers and describes a career almost nobody has. The median, ten sides, describes the midpoint, which is what you actually want when asking whether your own year was normal.
So when you see a figure quoted without specifying which it is, assume it is an average and treat it with suspicion. And when you see a brokerage quoting a per-agent average in recruitment material, it is worth asking what their median is.
What ten sides a year actually looks like
Under one transaction side per month. That is the pace of the median Realtor, and stating it plainly is useful because the industry's public narrative rarely does.
It means the typical agent is not managing a high-throughput operation. They are working a small number of high-value, long-cycle transactions, where a single lost client is a meaningful proportion of the year's income. The economics reward conversion and retention far more than they reward volume.
It also explains why lead response speed matters more in this field than in almost any other. When your year consists of ten sides, losing one to a slow callback is losing ten percent of your production, and there is no way to make it up with throughput.
The transaction you lose is the one you did not answer
Real estate enquiries are unusually time-sensitive and unusually promiscuous. A buyer looking at a listing portal contacts several agents, often within minutes of each other, and the one who responds first has a substantial advantage before any of the others have opened the message.
The structural problem is that agents are, by the nature of the work, frequently unable to answer. You are at a showing, in a closing, driving between appointments, or with another client. Those are exactly the hours enquiries arrive, because they arrive when people are browsing listings.
Given a median of ten sides a year, this is not a marginal issue. A handful of missed enquiries over twelve months is the difference between a median year and a good one, and the agent never sees the ones that went elsewhere.
●Where Venbit fits
A Venbit voice and chat agent answers listing enquiries while you are at a showing, handles the price, availability, and viewing-request questions from your own listing material, and captures the lead with a callback number so a portal enquiry does not go to whichever agent replied first. See the real estate playbook or start free.
Benchmarking yourself properly
Count your transaction sides for the calendar year and compare against 10 for 2024 or 9 for 2025. If you want the homes figure, split your sides into listing side and buyer side, which is a more informative breakdown anyway since the work and the economics differ.
Put average sale price beside it. Ten sides in one market is a completely different income to ten in another, and comparing raw counts across markets tells you very little.
Then track enquiry-to-appointment conversion and time to first response. At this transaction volume those two metrics move your year more than anything else you could optimise, and both are measurable from your phone and inbox rather than requiring new software.
Frequently asked questions
How many homes does the average realtor sell per year?+
NAR's median is 10 transaction sides for 2024. Because a side is earned representing either the buyer or the seller, that works out to roughly 5 homes sold and 5 purchases assisted rather than 10 homes sold. NAR's 2025 figure is 9 sides, so the current split is closer to four or five each.
What is a transaction side in real estate?+
One half of a completed sale. The agent representing the seller earns a side and the agent representing the buyer earns a side, so every sale produces two. This is why side counts should not be read as homes sold.
Why use the median instead of the average?+
Real estate production is heavily skewed, with a small share of agents and teams completing a large proportion of all transactions. The average gets pulled upward by top producers and describes a year very few agents actually have.
Is 10 transactions a year good for a realtor?+
It is the median, so it is exactly typical. Whether it is a good year depends far more on average sale price and commission structure in your market than on the count itself.
Why do some sources say 12 transactions?+
That is an older NAR median that is still widely repeated. More recent data puts the median at 10 transaction sides, so check the year attached to any figure you are comparing against.
Conclusion
Ten transaction sides is the NAR median, and that is roughly five homes sold plus five purchases assisted. Anyone quoting it as ten homes sold has nearly doubled the typical agent's production, and the average is worse still because the distribution is so skewed.
At under one side a month, the levers that matter are conversion and response speed rather than volume. A handful of enquiries answered by someone else over a year is the whole difference between a median result and a good one.
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