Real Estate Used to Be 50% Easier – Here’s the Data to Prove It

Real Estate is Hard. Our data proves it. But, back in the day, listings just… happened.
It was the best of times. Homeowners actually moved — and there were more than enough deals to go around.
Those days are gone.

We called it Y2K, but for you youngsters, that was the year 2000 and it was an incredible time to be alive – especially in real estate and technology. Our .com powered tech was rocketing forward with data centric innovations like an iMac home computer that looked “fun” because it was not white, it was, …. blue. Like a big ol’ blue gumdrop. PC users could also get at home CD burners in your computer for your Spin Dr’s Napster music collection. But perhaps most importantly you could get a fish that hung on your wall and sang “take me to the river” named Billy.

How very fortunate we were.

The Real Estate Data

But we couldn’t know what was in store for home owners and the real estate industry. Between then and now, the number of movers per year would drop by 50%.

At the time, nearly 8%* of all owner-occupied households moved in a single year.
Fast forward to now and that number’s down to 3.6%* – a historic low.
That means the pool of potential listings has been sliced in half. 50% Fewer moves. 50% Fewer listings. But also there’s 100% more competition for every single seller. There are soooooo many more real estate agents now.

Back in 2000 per NAR membership data, there were about 50% FEWER real estate agents, at 766,000. Now we have robust membership over 1.5M.

Stephebn Brobeck wrote in January of this year that “Nearly half of sampled agents (49%) reported no or only one sale the previous year, and 70% reported five or fewer sales.” Using back of the envelope math with about 5M home sales last year and 1.5M agents thats only 3.3 sales per agent. Thats not an accurate picture of reality, but also that exaggerated average would not produce enough revenue from commissions to live on.

Real estate used to be easier, not because agents were smarter or marketing was better, but because there was less competition from other agents and simply more movement.

As you know, today, with mortgage rate lock-in, low inventory, and affordability challenges, the number of homeowners making a move each year is at rock bottom.

(but it can always go lower…)

The Real Estate Data Solution

So, what should you do when the going gets hard? Buy more leads?

The case study we did with Tom Ferry found that agents miss out on 93% of the listings in their own database. That’s more than enough to double the number of listings you currently have, without buying more leads.

So instead, double down on your own data.

Let Revaluate show you the real estate data opportunities that are hiding right under your nose – before another agent finds them.

Get Your Database Audit

Source Data
*Data available via US Census. The underlying data (annual mover rates by tenure) is the Current Population Survey (CPS) / Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC), Table “Geographic Mobility by Tenure”. The 3.6% figure is for owner-occupied households moving in 2023 and is an estimate based on Census CPS ASEC “geographic mobility by tenure” trends.It’s in line with the Census mobility decline for owners, but it is an approximation.