Five Things You Must Know About REALTORS in Portland

Everybody knows a real estate agent, but how much do you really know about them? As a home buyer or seller in Portland, it’s useful to know what motivates real estate agents, and get behind the scenes into how we do our work.

1. Real estate agents are self-employed, with very few exceptions. All real estate agents in Oregon are also called (officially called) Brokers. Real estate agent is a commonly understood term, but Broker is the official licensing term in Oregon. In Oregon there are Brokers and Principle Brokers. Principle Brokers can, but do not necessarily, supervise other Brokers. (Often if they supervise other Brokers they are called “Reviewing Principle Brokers”.) If real estate agents are not Principle Brokers they work under the guidance of one. Reviewing Principle Brokers have legal responsibility for all transactions completed by their Brokers, and they also oversee their actions so that there is a double-check on everything. Most of the time Reviewing Principle Brokers do not also sell homes, their main job is supervision (occasionally they do both). Because they are self-employed, real estate agents are responsible for all of their own income taxes (high in Portland!) and expenses — everything from the vehicle they use all day long to the marketing they do on behalf of their clients.

2. Not all real estate agents are full time. According to the National Association of Realtors 2016 Member profile the median REALTOR sold 5 listings and helped a buyer purchase 5 homes, for a median of 10 transactions a year. What does this mean? Many real estate agents are getting by on a handful of transactions per year. I’ve been licensed since 2003 in Oregon and I’ll admit I did not start off in my rookie year as a full time agent, it took a while before I was established enough to work full time in the industry.

3. You can research real estate agents online. You can check how active a real estate agent in your area is by searching for them in Zillow’s agent finder. It will tell you how many transactions that agent completed in the last 12 months. It may also include their lifetime sales, the year they were licensed, and client reviews. Not all real estate agents are on Zillow, but many are.

4. We’re everywhere. Okay, maybe you knew this one already, but seriously — there are a lot of agents to pick from. Counting the total numbers of REALTORS®, agents and brokers working in the Portland area is tricky, but we can get a rough estimate. Any real estate agent who is a member of the National Association of Realtors gets to advertise themselves as a REALTOR® and abides by a strict code of ethics. Most real estate agents are NAR members, so their membership rosters provide a good idea of how many are working in the metro area: over 7,000. See our last report on this count here.

5. Not all real estate agents provide the same services. This is especially true when it comes to sellers’ agents. Before you commit, ask! We charge a reasonable commission rate and pay more to market our client’s homes so they sell faster and for more money. See our full (and unique) listing package here.