Real-Estate Agents Quit As Housing Market Slouches

“Kim Taylor bet her career on the housing market.

 

In mid-2023, the real-estate agent launched her own brokerage with her husband, Gordon Taylor. The market in the Fort Worth, Texas, area had cooled from its pandemic-era frenzy, but business was good. Taylor started out with a team of seven agents and quickly brought six more onboard.

 

By 2024, high mortgage rates and prices were weighing on demand, and homes sat on the market.

 

Most of Taylor's agents had to find other part-time or full-time jobs to stay afloat. Her husband took a job last year working for a school district.

 

"We just became a bleeding artery," said Taylor, who started working in real estate in 2015. "The last 11 months have been the hardest of my career." She closed the brokerage this spring and joined another firm.

 

The slowest housing market in decades is stretching into its fourth year, and even real-estate agents who made it this far are reaching a breaking point. Most agents are independent contractors and get paid when a deal closes. With fewer sales to go around and homes taking longer to sell, more agents are ditching the industry or finding second jobs.

 

The downturn is also hitting mortgage-loan officers and the many other industries reliant on home sales, from appraisers and photographers to appliance manufacturers.

 

"There's so many pieces to the puzzle of a home sale," said Sheri Lane, who sells home-warranty policies in Texas. "If the homes aren't moving, it's going to affect all of us."

 

Lane said her sales were down from a few years ago.

 

The housing market is cyclical, and it's common for employment to grow during booms and fall during busts. But the current slow market has lasted longer than most anyone expected. When measured as a share of total households, last year's existing-home sales pace was the worst since 1982, according to an analysis by First American Financial.

 

The slow market isn't the only obstacle facing real-estate agents. A legal settlement in 2024 that changed how real-estate agents get paid encouraged some buyers to forgo hiring an agent.

 

The rise of artificial intelligence has also made it easier for buyers and sellers who want to navigate the process on their own.

 

The slowdown is especially hurting smaller companies, with some being acquired by large brokerages, builders and lenders. Bigger companies can invest in better technology or offer multiple business lines such as title and escrow services, to become a one-stop shop for home buyers and sellers.

 

The National Association of Realtors had 1.412 million members as of April, down from a peak of 1.6 million in October 2022.

 

Compared with past market downturns, the membership decline since 2022 has been modest, said Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist.

 

But membership numbers don't tell the whole story. Many agents choose to keep their real-estate licenses active even if they find other jobs, in case opportunities come up in the future.

 

About 71% of agents surveyed by NAR in 2025 said that real estate was their only profession, the lowest proportion on record in survey data going back to 2005.

 

Many agents "had to get a secondary source of income to pay the bills," said Mark Johnson, managing partner at Recruiting Insight, a consulting firm that works with real-estate brokerages.

 

The most productive agents are still succeeding, but the housing downturn has "hollowed out what I'm going to call the real-estate professional middle class," he said.

 

The housing boom that started in 2020 attracted newcomers to real estate. But many found it tough going after the market slowed.

 

The typical agent with two years of experience or less did three transactions in 2024 and earned $8,100 in gross income from real estate, according to the NAR survey.

 

Erica Rojek of Silver Spring, Md., got her real-estate license in 2021, when home sales were booming, and did two transactions that year. She worked part time as an agent while keeping her sales job at a furniture manufacturer. Rojek ramped up to four deals in both 2022 and 2023, earning about $45,000 in commissions each year before taxes and expenses.

 

But she only closed one deal in 2024, and the extra income wasn't worth the stress, she said. She gave up her license in early 2025.

 

"It's a lot of energy and a lot of money just to exist as a real-estate agent," she said, citing costs for licensing, brokerage fees, marketing and coaching. "When you're not closing the transactions, it makes it really hard to continue."

 

Mortgage industry employment has declined almost 40% from its peak in 2021, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

 

The count of the most active mortgage-loan originators -- those who do at least 10 deals a year -- has roughly dropped in half, said Garth Graham, senior partner at mortgage-advisory firm Stratmor Group.

 

Tristan Holt became a loan officer last year after moving to Detroit and struggled to gain momentum. He closed a few deals, but "it's definitely a tough market," he said. "Once the whole Iran conflict started it was like, 'Man, there's not enough business out there to be had.'"

 

Holt quit in April and is looking for a job in banking or insurance.” [1]

 

1. Real-Estate Agents Quit As Housing Market Slouches. Friedman, Nicole.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 29 May 2026: A1.