The Recruiting Treadmill Nobody Wants to Admit We’re On

Two hundred twenty thousand agents moved brokerages last year, and the industry barely moved forward. Here’s what that says about how real estate measures growth.

The first time I saw the numbers, I thought it was a typo.

(These numbers come from Courted’s newly released 2025 State of Brokerage Recruiting & Retention report, written by Courted co-founder and CEO Sean Soderstrom, one of the more data-grounded looks at what is actually happening beneath all the recruiting headlines.)

Two hundred twenty thousand agents moved brokerages in a single year. Sixteen percent of the industry just packed up their signs and switched logos. That kind of movement feels like momentum. It feels like something is happening. Phones ringing, recruiting teams flying, lunches getting expensed, announcements hitting social feeds with smiling headshots and phrases like “thrilled to welcome.”

And then you look at the net growth.

The top 100 brands recruited $276 billion in volume. They lost $233 billion in volume. After all that motion, the scoreboard moved 1.8 percent.

That is not a typo. It is a treadmill.

The Industry Runs on Motion

We talk a lot about recruiting in this industry, like it is oxygen. If you are not recruiting, you are dying. If you are not growing headcount, you are shrinking.

So teams are built. Incentives are sharpened. Concessions are made. Time is poured into courtship. And on paper, it looks like expansion. Two hundred twenty-nine thousand agents joined those top brands. Only one of the top 100 lost agents on a net basis. From the outside, it looks like strength.

But revenue does not care how many welcome emails you send.

Revenue cares about production.

And here is where it gets uncomfortable. Eighty-one of the top 100 brands recruited agents who were less productive than the agents they lost. On average, they lost agents producing $2.11 million annually and replaced them with agents producing $1.44 million.

That is a 46 percent quality gap.

Headcount up. Per-agent productivity is down. You can grow a machine that way. It just hums louder while producing less.

Nearly Half the Industry Isn’t Producing

There is another stat buried in the report that deserves more attention than it will get.

When you look at overall agent distribution, 47 percent of agents had no transactions or less than $1 million in production. Nearly half of the people wearing a badge did effectively zero business.

That is not a criticism. It is a reality.

But if nearly half the workforce is not meaningfully contributing to the bottom line, and recruiting activity largely shuffles that same workforce around, then what exactly are we building?

We are building motion.

Rowing vs. Sailing

I have written before about rowing versus sailing. Rowing feels productive. You are sweating. Muscles firing. Oars slicing water. Sailing feels almost lazy. You adjust the sail and let the wind do the work.

Most brokerages are rowing like maniacs while insisting the wind is their strategy. Gross recruiting is rowing. Net production growth is sailing.

The industry recruited volume equivalent to 12 percent growth while simultaneously losing volume equal to 10 percent of its base. That is a lot of rowing for a two percent forward drift.

Imagine pushing a stalled car uphill with twenty friends, only to realize the parking brake is still on. Everyone is exhausted. The car moved three feet.

This is not a talent problem. It is a system problem.

The Cost of Constant Churn

When 46 percent of agents in a given year are new, switching firms, or exiting entirely, you are operating on shifting sand.

Fifteen percent joined the industry.
Sixteen percent switched brokerages.
Fifteen percent left.

Nearly half the workforce is in transition. That kind of churn creates noise. Noise feels like effort. Noise looks like leadership. But noise is not margin.

There is a difference between activity and contribution. Activity fills calendars. Contribution fills P&L statements.

If nearly half your recruits are producing at the bottom end of the spectrum, you are not recruiting growth. You are recruiting possibility.

The Addiction to Busy Work

Possibility is intoxicating. It carries stories. Hope. The idea that if you just get enough people in the room, something will spark. And occasionally it does.

The report highlights brands like Real Broker and LPT Realty posting real net gains. Some models are clearly converting motion into production better than others.

But even those models operate inside the same physics: high churn, heavy onboarding, and significant turnover costs.

When more than a third of your population either joined or left in a single year, you are not running a stable enterprise. You are running a train station.

The uncomfortable question is this: What if the industry is addicted to busy work?

Recruiting announcements. Onboarding calls. Brand refreshes. New logos on yard signs. Social posts celebrating lateral moves. Meetings about meetings. Strategy sessions about recruiting strategy.

Entire departments are measured on gross additions instead of net contributions. It feels like growth because it is visible.

Quiet Growth Looks Different

Net production growth is quiet.

It shows up in margins.
In retention of productive agents.
In improving the output of the people you already have.

That work is less glamorous. It requires reducing preventable volume loss. It requires actually helping agents produce more, not just moving them across town. And here is the part no one loves to say out loud:

If 47 percent of agents are doing little to no business, then a significant portion of recruiting effort is directed at people who will not materially change your revenue trajectory.

They might fill seats. Attend trainings. Post on Instagram. But they are not moving the needle. And yet they consume onboarding time, support time, and leadership attention.

I have watched leaders chase headcount the way some people chase step counts on a smartwatch. Ten thousand feels good. You hit the goal. Dopamine delivered. But if those steps are pacing around your living room, you did not go anywhere.

Systems Beat Grind

Clarity creates movement. Confusion creates stall. If the metric is gross recruits, you will get gross recruits. If the metric is net volume growth, the conversation changes.

You start asking harder questions:

Who are we losing and why?
How do we protect our most productive agents?
What systems increase contribution per agent?
Where are we tolerating drag because it feels polite?

Systems beat grind. Right now, much of brokerage competition is grind. Impressive grind. Expensive grind. Energetic grind. But grind does not compound. Systems do.

Direction Matters More Than Effort

The next phase of this industry will not be decided by who shouts the loudest about recruiting wins.

It will be decided by who quietly converts motion into durable production. Who reduces churn? Who increases per-agent output? Who understands that adding low-producing headcount is not the same as adding enterprise value?

Busy work keeps people tired. It rarely makes them wealthy. If you run a brokerage, a team, or even just your own book of business, the question is simple:

Are you rowing harder, or adjusting the sail? Are you measuring motion, or measuring contribution? The water does not care how much you sweat. It only cares about direction.

-k

If you care about brokerage strategy, recruiting, or where industry competition is actually heading, I strongly recommend reading Courted’s full 2025 State of Brokerage Recruiting & Retention report by Sean Soderstrom.

It’s one of the clearer data-driven breakdowns of agent mobility, recruiting economics, and net production growth I’ve seen this year.

You can check out the full report here.

If this made you pause, or made you slightly uncomfortable, that’s probably a good sign.

I write these each week to help leaders and agents think a little deeper about where this industry is actually heading, not just where the announcements say it is.

Subscribe if you want real estate conversations that go beyond headlines and into the systems shaping what comes next.