Why real estate brokerages keep losing good agents

The agents walking out of your brokerage outproduce the ones you bring in to replace them. Courted’s 2025 recruiting and retention report put numbers on it. Agents who left a brokerage last year were producing $2.11 million a year. The ones recruited in behind them, $1.44 million. The top 100 brands by volume brought in 1.9 agents for every one they lost and grew volume 1.8%. Each swap costs the building $670,000 a year, headcount unchanged. Ten is $6.7 million. Agents leave for one of two reasons. Somebody offered them a better split, or they got upset about something the brokerage did or didn’t do for them. The first is the one we talk about, because it arrives with a number attached and a competitor to blame. The second quietly empties a building. It’s never one dramatic thing. It accumulates. They asked for help and what came back was a training. I’m not pointing at brokerage leaders. Most inherited this model and get a recruiting number every January, never a development one. I spent four years leading agent development at Compass as it grew from 6,000 agents to more than 25,000. What I heard most, room after room, was some version of I’m good at this, and I’m drowning. What t...