No offence, but you guys look pretty young. If I'm looking to buy or sell a place, why wouldn't I want a more experienced agent who has been in the business for a long time to help me with real estate needs?

James, Toronto

Hi James,

Firstly, thanks for the youthful compliment - good thing because anti-aging cremes are quite expensive.   

In today's rapidly changing real estate market, it’s not as important how long an agent has been in the business in comparison to how much business they actually do. Years in the business is not necessarily equivalent to experience -- for example, an agent could have been in the business for 10 years, but only did on average 5 deals per year, which is a total of 50 deals versus an agent that has been in the business for 2 years but averages 40 deals a year for a total of 80 transactions... who would you say has more insight into the market? On top of that, five years ago, ww.mls.ca was still a new phenomenon and fifteen years ago, computers were virtually non-existent... so times have definitely changed and not everyone has changed with them.

On the other hand, the drop-out rates for real estate agents is consistent with start-up companies (in the first year 80% of people in the business leave and after that only 7% of the 20% left actually last after the second year) so if the (full time) agent has been in the business for awhile, then it’s a positive sign that they’ve rode out the ups and downs of the market.  Still the best way to guage is through happy past clients and of course, the more the merrier!

So now back to your question in regards to experience, the answer is that age is but a number. The more critical question is probably… “ How many transactions/deals have you done in the last year and/or how many do you do on average?”

FYI: we do over a hundred deals per year averaging about one deal every 59 hours.

=)