NWA Real Estate Agents Ring In Banner Sales

• For the list of the top-grossing residential real estate agents, click here.

(And click here for the list and article on the region’s top real estate firms.)

There are 412 agents in the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Top Grossing Real Estate agents list, an increase of 20 percent from 344 on 2004’s list. To qualify, agents had to sell $2 million or more. The total sales increase from 2004 to 2005 was about 55.6 percent from $1.8 billion in 2004 to $2.8 billion.

Overall, sales of the 42 firms on the list totaled $3.7 billion in 2005, which is a 34.6 percent increase from sales of $2.7 billion in 2004.

The top 10 agent’s sales totaled $417.93 million, which is a 38 percent increase from the top 10 agent sales of $306 million on 2004. The top 100 agent sales totaled $1.5 billion in 2005. Firm sales increased 44 percent from 2003 to 2004.

Keri Barber, agent for Dallas Real Estate Services Inc. in Fayetteville, holds the No. 1 spot on the list with $85.7 million. Meza Harris, who has held the No. 1 spot since 1999, earned $52.2 million in 2005. Whitney Barrett, Dallas Real Estate agent and Barber’s assistant, said Barber’s 2005 total includes the sale of nine different subdivisions. Barrett said some of Barber’s transactions would not show up on the multiple listing service because the properties were never listed for sale.

The Future

George Faucette, owner of Coldwell Banker Faucette Real Estate in Fayetteville, said he doesn’t think “slow” is a good word to describe what will happen to the Northwest Arkansas real estate market in 2006.

The supply of homes has increased and demand has decreased slightly, he said.

That might make sales increases for individual agents more of a challenge in the coming year.

“The price won’t decrease, but the buyer might have more negotiating power,” Faucette said.

Jim Gillespie, president and CEO of Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corp., recently visited Northwest Arkansas to talk to Coldwell Banker Faucette agents.

Gillespie said his impression of the Northwest Arkansas real estate market is that it is sustainable. Gillespie said nationally, the real estate agents are looking at their third best year on record.

But Gillespie said supply can’t keep up with demand across the country, according to a 2004 Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Study.

The study said more than 100 billion SF of new residential space will be needed by 2030 based on 2000 census estimates and that most new growth will occur in the South and West. In 2000, the nation had 115.9 million residential units. It projects there is a need for 38.8 million more housing units nationwide by 2030.

Essentially, the Brookings study said nearly half of what will be the “built environment” by 2030 hasn’t even been built yet.

Nationwide, real estate agents will see a decrease in sales of residential units of about 3 to 5 percent, but the appreciation of home value will be there.

“One of the great things about the real estate business is that agents really have control of their own destiny,” Faucette said. “So again, if the market starts slowing down, agents have the capability to make things different because they live and die by their own efforts.”

Editor’s Note:

Two real estate agents would have made the top 100 list, but their sales were reported to the Business Journal as the issue was going to print. Nicky Dou of Paradigm Real Estate Solutions earned $7.7 million in residential sales in 2005, and Katherine Harrison of Good Faith Realty in Pea Ridge earned $8.3 million last year.

Local real estate companies report sales for the Business Journal’s annual list in February. For the individual sales totals used here, team sales were excluded. Also, only agents with at least $2 million or more in sales were included. Not all agents whose totals are reported in the company totals report their individual sales.