Agent recruitment poses biggest industry challenge, survey says

The ability to attract younger agents to their firms is the biggest challenge facing real estate brokers, according to the 2013 Thought Leader Survey by Imprev, a real estate marketing software firm.

Competition by local real estate agencies was also a concern. More than one-third of respondents said they were not able to get top-producing agents to apply with their firms. Nearly half (49 percent) said competitors offered a better commission split, offered lower costs for affiliation (46 percent), had a larger market share (23 percent), offered signing bonuses (22 percent) and provided more leads to agents (21 percent).

Other key findings of the survey include:

• Factors that were not seen as among the three biggest competitive challenges in recruiting included mentoring (9 percent), employee benefits (7 percent), facilities (6 percent), culture (3 percent), reputation (3 percent) and leadership (2 percent).
• Asked to identify the three biggest business challenges in recruiting top talent, just over half (51 percent) of the executives surveyed from May 22 to May 31 said they were not attracting enough younger agents.
• Not being able to devote enough time to recruiting (44 percent) or get top agents to apply (36 percent) were the next most cited business challenges for recruiting.