In a hot real estate market like we’ve been experiencing in the GTA for the last while, it can seem like who you hire to sell a property has little impact on the sale.
If that was true, then it makes tremendous sense to simply hire the real estate company that charges the lowest commission. Cutting your costs while maintaining the same result is always a good idea.
While every real estate agent and company will offer up arguments as to why they are worth their commission, there are stats that show how much over asking each real estate company gets for their clients. This is actual data that specifies the average sale to list price ratio achieved by agents with these real estate companies.
Put simply, it answers the question – does it matter which agent I hire to sell my home? The answer is a definitive yes. We’re not permitted to disclose the names and statistics of the other real estate companies in the dataset, but we can tell you about our real estate company, Keller Williams.
Let’s review the data.
The Players
Within the GTA, there are seven major real estate companies that do significant volume of business. How significant? Each of the below companies transacted over $8 billion dollars worth of real estate in the GTA in the past twelve months (January 2021 to January 2022). Here they are, in alphabetical order:
- Century 21
- Homelife
- Keller Williams
- Re/Max
- Right At Home
- Royal LePage
- Sutton Group
It is worth noting that there are hundreds of smaller real estate companies that collectively transact significant volumes within the GTA. While as a group those small, individual brokerages do lots of business, it is the seven companies listed above that are the largest within the GTA and they account for about half of all of the real estate transactions that take place in the GTA.
110.07% Over Asking
When we look at the average sale to list price ratio in the GTA over the past twelve months (January 2021 to January 2022), here’s what we see.
Within the seven major real estate companies in the GTA, the average sold to list price ratio is very good news for sellers. Six of the seven companies have a range that is between 107.5% and 108.7%, meaning these companies make their clients between 7.5% to 8.7% more than the list price on average.
The outlier in this group of seven is Keller Williams, which comes in at 110.07% on average. That’s 1.31% more than the next highest result and a whopping 2.55% higher than the lowest average return amongst these companies.
Put simply, if you hire an agent from Keller Williams, on average you’d make at least 1.3% more than any other agent, and you could make up to 2.5% more than if you’d hired an agent from another company.
Make Between $14K to $28K More
If we use the average sale price in the GTA over the past twelve months of $1.127M, that means that Keller Williams agents, on average, make their clients almost $15K more than the second best performing company and over $28,000 than the lowest performing major real estate company in the GTA.
That may not feel like much when you look at the sale prices we’re seeing these days, but look at it this way – hire an agent from KW and whatever high price you sell your home for, add between $15,000 to $28,000 extra. When it comes to selling real estate, more money is almost always better.
Hire a KW Agent and Sale Commission is Effectively Zero
That 2.55% difference in average sale to list price ratio from the lowest ranking real estate company to Keller Williams is a definitive answer as to whether your listing agent makes a difference to your sale price.
It matters who you hire. It just does.
With a typical listing commission of 2.5% on the sale side – and KW agents selling for between 1.31% to 2.55% higher than all of the other agents of major companies in the GTA – if you hire an agent from Keller Williams it could effectively cost you nothing to pay them their commission.
The next time you see ads for discounted commissions for a listing agent, think about whether they would be willing to discount their commission to nothing, or even pay you for the privilege of selling your home. They would say no, but if you hire a KW agent, the increased sale price means they are literally earning you the money to pay most or all of the commission to sell your home.
Not just better, quicker.
As a final added bonus, when we look at the average days on market it takes for a home to sell, Keller Williams also leads the pack, taking 11.1 days on average to sell a home in the GTA. The next quickest result is 12 days and the slowest is 13.6 days.
Just like with the sale to list price ratio, Keller Williams is a significant outlier and the only real estate company to sell for less than 12 days. A speedy sale at a higher price? That sounds like a pretty good result.
It can be hard to tell whether there are genuine differences between real estate agents and whether one real estate company is a better hire than another. These stats prove that when it comes to selling a home, if you want to sell for significantly more than you would get with another agent, and quicker to boot, you should hire an agent from Keller Williams.
We’re proud to be part of the number one real estate company in the world, with the largest number of agents doing the highest volume of deals, and if you want to see your home sell for the most money, in the quickest amount of time, get in touch!
