The Real Reason Agents Are Washing Out Faster Than Ever

1 in 2 agents who closed their first deal in 2022 did not close a single deal in 2023.

Not one.

I have been in real estate 14 years. I have been coaching agents for 15. And what I am watching right now in this industry is worse than most people are willing to say out loud.

The two-year fallout rate for the 2022 agent cohort may top 65%. NAR has lost over 110,000 members from its October 2022 peak. New agent licensing dropped 24% in 2025 alone.

Here is what I actually think happened. And why it is still not over.

The 2020 to 2022 market did not just bring in a wave of new agents. It created a generation of agents who were never tested.

Homes were selling themselves. A new agent could write one offer, collect a commission, and walk away thinking they were good at this job. They were not. They were present during an anomaly. When the market corrected, they had no foundation and they were gone almost overnight.

What that left behind in brokerage culture is still not fully reckoned with. The middle got hollowed out. Veterans who remember hard cycles on one end. Raw newcomers on the other. The institutional knowledge that used to transfer naturally between them dried up.

It changed how I coach and it changed what I look for.

I stopped caring about enthusiasm at the front door. I care about evidence of discipline. Can you show me a system you have used somewhere else in your life? Because real estate does not build discipline. It reveals whether you already have it.

I also stopped teaching scripts.

Most sales training in real estate is built around what to say AT people. Scripts, objection handlers, pattern interrupts. I came from a different background before coaching in real estate and that is where I encountered motivational interviewing as a clinical communication framework. It was developed for behavioral change work. When I brought it into real estate everything shifted.

Motivational interviewing is not about what you say. It is about what you draw out. You ask in a way that causes the person in front of you to voice their own reasons, their own urgency, their own fears. When a client hears themselves say it, they own it. No script does that.

I have watched veteran agents with a decade of experience hit a ceiling and then completely reshape their results once they stopped pushing and started pulling. I have watched brand new agents outperform three year veterans in listing conversations because they learned to listen before the bad habits ever formed.

It works at every stage. The application just looks different.

And here is what I want to leave you with.

The 13% who make it past year five are not more talented than the ones who quit. They have a daily non-negotiable that does not move regardless of how they feel, how quiet their phone is, or what the market is doing. They stopped waiting to feel ready somewhere in year one and just started doing the work anyway.

That is the turning point I watch for as a coach. Once I see it, I know they are going to be okay.

In 14 years that has never changed.

What has changed is how fast the other 87% decide they have had enough.

Kimberly Tomlinson
Broker, RE/MAX Alliance | Founder, Endeavour Real Estate Coaching | Fort Collins, CO