After a multi-year decline in agent movement between brokerages, Relitix’s Agent Movement Index shows a clear bottoming out in early fall of 2023 and increased real estate agent mobility as we move into 2024.
“We can definitely call a bottom to the decline in agent movement,” said Rob Keefe, Relitix founder and president. “Agents will begin moving more between brokerages in 2024 as the market begins to normalize. However, the drop in active agent count from a peak in late 2022 will mean that the total number of experienced agent recruits will remain lower than what we were seeing in recent years.”
The monthly AMI value finished at 70.4 for December with a seasonally adjusted value of 92.2. The November values were revised upward to 81.2 and 91.6 respectively.
Trends in the relative movement of experienced real estate agents between brokerages are an important strategic consideration for brokerage and franchise leaders. The relative amount of movement fluctuates over time on a seasonal and long-term basis.
Methodology: The Agent Movement Index is published monthly and features monthly and seasonally adjusted, and 12-trailing-month values. The index is calculated using national-level data from a large sample of the nation’s most prominent MLS systems. The agent movement reflects the relative mobility of experienced agents between brokerages. The score is computed by estimating the number of agents who changed brokerages in a given month. To be counted the agent must be a member of one of the analyzed MLS’s and change to a substantially different office name at a different address. M&A-driven activity and reflags are excluded as are new agents and agents who leave real estate. Efforts are made to exclude out of market agents and those which are MLS system artifacts. The number of agents changing offices is divided by the number of agents active in the past 12 months in the analyzed market areas. This percentage is normalized to reflect a value of 100 at the level of movement in January 2016 (0.7313%). The seasonally adjusted value divides the monthly result by the average of the same month in prior years.
Analyzed MLS’s represent over 800,000 members and include: ACTRIS, ARMLS, BAREIS, BeachesMLS, BrightMLS, Canopy, Charleston Trident, CRMLS, GAMLS, GlobalMLS, HAR, LVAR, Metrolist, MLSListings, MLSNow, MLSPIN, MRED, Northstar, NTREIS, NWMLS, OneKey, RealComp, REColorado, SEF, Stellar, Triad, Triangle, and UtahRealEstate.
Rob Keefe is founder of Relitix Data Science.
