Fewer deals, and more work inside each one
At Inman Connect San Diego, Ethica CEO Judd Hoffman asked Phil Hawkins, CEO of the California Association of REALTORS®, how the job of being an agent is changing and what's becoming harder.
Hawkins started with transaction volume, and the figures are stark. From about 2000 to 2022, California ran between 400,000 and 450,000 transactions a year. Since 2022 it's hovered around 270,000. C.A.R.'s own published data backs him up: 269,030 existing single-family home sales in 2024, against a 2021 peak of 444,520.
That by itself would make for a hard market. Fewer transactions, and the same agents competing for them.
But volume was only part of his answer, and the rest is what makes it bite.
"Your clients are looking for the REALTOR® to respond 24-7. Real estate's never been a nine-to-five job, but I would say it's getting worse over that time period. So they're looking for quicker access, more demanding, and transactions have gotten harder, not easier."
Put those together and the real shape of the job comes through. There's less work available, and every piece of it costs more than it used to. Fewer deals. Higher expectations inside each one. More complexity before any of them close.
That combination is worse than either problem by itself. In a slow market with simple transactions, an agent can make up the difference by taking on more clients. In a busy market with complicated ones, the volume pays for the effort. Agents now have the difficult half of both: not enough deals, and each one asking more hours than the last.
Hawkins put it plainly.
"Everything's gotten harder."
In a market like that, every hour an agent spends back at the office on paperwork is an hour not spent finding the next client or looking after the one they have.
Hawkins had more to say about where C.A.R. landed on that in the full conversation, which runs about twelve minutes.
