Keller Williams leads way in booming residential market

Keller Williams Market Pro Realty topped the $600 million mark in residential sales volume for the third consecutive year and remains at the top of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s annual ranking of the largest residential real estate firms.

For a PDF of the top-producing agents, teams and firms in the region, click here.

For a PDF of the 10 most expensive home sales in the region last year, click here.

The local Keller Williams affiliate, with offices in Bentonville and Fayetteville, claimed the top spot on the list for the second consecutive year, according to data provided by the Northwest Arkansas Board of Realtors (NABOR). The company’s residential Realtors combined to produce a sales volume of $630.73 million in 2018, a slight dip from 2017 totals of $642.85 but still more than any other firm on this year’s list (see page 18).

The 2018 total makes up about 15% of all combined total volume of the 31 firms that qualified for this year’s list. Firms had to have a total sales volume of $25 million or more in 2018 to be included.

The Keller Williams franchise in its present form began operations in March 2013 when Market Pro Realty of Rogers merged with Fayetteville’s Keller Williams Realty of Northwest Arkansas.

The combination spurred steady growth. The company’s sales volume totaled $170.21 million in 2013, followed by $262.29 million in 2014, $403.41 million in 2015 and $608.41 in 2016.

Fayetteville-based Coldwell Banker Harris McHaney Faucette, with branch offices in Rogers, Siloam Springs and Bentonville, also topped the $600 million mark in 2018 with a combined residential sales volume of $614.21 million, up 9.4% from 2017 and No. 2 on the list. Lindsey & Associates, with offices in Fayetteville and Rogers, is No. 3 on the list with $592.20 million, a 13.2% increase from 2017. Together, the “Big Three” represented 45% of all sales on the list of largest firms.

Overall, the value of single-family properties sold in the two-county area last year reached an all-time high of $2.35 billion, up 7.9% from $2.18 billion in 2017, the first time residential sales surpassed the $2 billion mark.

RIGGINS REPEATS
Kendall Riggins, a longtime agent with Lindsey & Associates of Fayetteville, topped the Business Journal’s list of top residential agents for the second year in a row and sixth time overall. Riggins closed 2018 with a residential sales volume of $42.19 million, a 17% jump from 2017.

For the third consecutive year, the Business Journal put a ceiling on its annual ranking of area Realtors with a Top 100 list. In the past, the publication ranked every local Realtor who exceeded a minimum dollar amount in sales volume. As the number of Realtors grew and the area’s population boomed, the list became cumbersome. The 2016 agent ranking, for example, ranked every Realtor who had a total volume in 2015 of at least $3.5 million — all 192 of them.

“The Business Journal has been doing this list every year since we started publishing in 1997, long before I was here, and like the real estate industry itself, it has evolved,” Editor Paul Gatling said. “Before we enlisted the help of NABOR, the Business Journal asked firms to supply their own sales figures. We moved away from that process because we felt like a third-party supplier would add a higher degree of validity. And it has.

“With this latest progression of the list, we feel like [the Top 100] gives us more of a consistency in showcasing the highest producers in Northwest Arkansas’ real estate industry.”

The data is based on the sales prices of existing residential properties, but because of the way the industry calculates its numbers, the figures do not actually reflect the value of properties sold. For example, when a home is sold for $200,000, the listing agent and the selling agent both get to include the full price — $200,000 — in their totals.

BY THE NUMBERS
At the end of December, NABOR reported 2,737 members.

That’s a lot of competition in one of the country’s fastest-growing metros, but the Top 100 identifies the best of the best.

The agents in this year’s Top 100 list — including every agent with at least $6.77 million in sales volume, according to NABOR — combined for a sales volume of $1.22 billion. That’s up 6% from $1.15 billion in the 2017 Top 100 list.

In a more distinct apples-to-apples comparison, the 10 highest-producing Realtors on the Top 100 list this year combined for a sales volume of $285.29 million, representing 23.2% of the Top 100 total. That’s up 9.2% from a cumulative total of $261.18 million in 2017.

In this year’s Top 100 list, 68 of the agents showed a positive increase in year-over-year comparison with their totals from 2017. There were 30 agents with a yearly improvement of more than 50%, and 17 agents who showed an annual improvement of more than 100%.

Using $10 million as a benchmark, there were 51 agents who had at least that amount in sales volume in 2018. That compares with 40 in 2017, 48 in 2016, 32 in 2015 and 29 in 2014.

Among the top 20 Realtors on this year’s list, Maria Fairchild with Lindsey & Associates in Rogers enjoyed the biggest year-over-year increase. She finished 2018 with a total volume of $16.54 million, an increase of 205.2% from the previous year. Fairchild’s successful year included listings that were two of the three most expensive home sales of the year in Benton and Washington counties (see page 8).

Other Realtors near the top of the list who had big sales increases in 2018 were Jana-Wrenay Elkins with Lindsey & Associates in Fayetteville (202.2%), Mary Bassett with Bassett Mix & Associates in Fayetteville (173%) and Lauren Boozman Northey with Portfolio Luxury Real Estate in Rogers (80.2%).

In the team sales category, Limbird Real Estate Group of Rogers — which records its residential sales volume as one collective team — topped the list with $118.65 million in 2018, up 6.3% from 2017 and nearly double the amount of the No. 2 team on the list.

The Curtis Realty Group representing HomeQuest Realty in Rogers, led by Brian Curtis, is No. 2 on the list for the second consecutive year. Curtis previously sold for Keller Williams before launching HomeQuest in April last year.

Teams representing Keller Williams landed four of the top eight spots on the list, led by Joseph Hayes & Associates with $44.28 million.