Residential News »Seattle Edition | By WPJ Staff | July 25, 2019.

According to Redfin, 99 percent of US real estate agents are proud of their services, and just 20 percent would recommend their careers to others.

The highest income (42%) and difficulty finding customers (38%).

Sixty percent of experienced agents said their incomes had increased in the past five years, while 14 percent said it decreased. Nearly half of all respondents worked on their income.

Agents Feel the Internet Has Decreased Productivity While Increasing Costs

The findings also reveal that they are spending more money than they have been in the past year, despite their increased pervasiveness. The survey findings also suggest that the internet has not been affected by this problem (33%) or has not affected the amount of time they spend (33%).

Meanwhile, commissions have been largely stable, with 49 percent of those reported to have major changes.

Gen-Xers were the easiest customers to serve. Millennials and Baby Boomers were deemed to be tough, with just 23 and 25 percent of respondents reporting that they were easy to serve.

"The lessons for the broader industry are more likely to be exaggerated." But we should also pay heed to agents' broad frustration with technology, their struggle to make new lead-generation channels profitable and to meet the demands of "says Redfin's CEO Glenn Kelman.

Racism and Bias in the Industry

Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, assistant professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico, who has focused on the relationship between the world and the world. Professor Korver-Glenn has researched how white agents often have privileged access to listings, lenders, builders and other resources that benefit white customers, unwittingly perpetuating the segregation that exists in many neighborhoods across the US

Asked about the races and ethnicities of their last 10 clients, the survey found white agents were compared to non-white agents. White agents said an average of two of their customers were not white, compared with an average of four non-white customers served by non-white agents. Non-white agents were also nearly as pervasive at 33 percent compared with 18 percent of white agents.

"Our hope has been that the Internet will mitigate some of the effects caused by the differential social networks of white and non-white agents," says Kelman. "We've found that a white customer who can be hired a white agent from its social network is perfectly comfortable hiring an agent of color on Redfin.com, especially when we're doing that."

Key agent survey findings by Refin include:

Nearly half of respondents have a second job; a third outside of real estate.

Millennials were the least likely to identify customers as easy to serve.

41% of agents who advertised on lead-generation sites had a positive return on investment.

33% of agents said the internet had increased the amount of work.

21% of agents would recommend their career to others.

Of agents with five years of experience, 49% said commissions have remained over the past five years, 31% said commissions had declined.

33% of non-white agents believe bias is pervasive, compared to 18% of white agents.

13% of female agents report sexism or harassment from customers, 6% from colleagues.