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America could fire 1.2 million realtors and still sell every house
ProfessionLens, 2026-09-27
American realtors sell a house every four months. Swedish realtors sell one every two weeks.
The National Association of Realtors had 1,439,163 members in June 2026. Americans bought 4.06 million existing homes in 2025. That is 2.8 homes per Realtor for the year.
Sweden had 7,465 registered real estate agents at the end of 2025, and they sold 171,200 homes: 107,000 apartments, 59,200 houses and 5,000 holiday homes. That is 22.9 homes per agent, eight times the American number.
If American agents sold at the Swedish rate, 4.06 million sales would need about 177,000 of them. The other 1,262,000, 88% of NAR's membership, would have nothing to sell.
Source: ProfessionLens, America could fire 1.2 million realtors and still sell every house, September 2026. Data: NAR, Fastighetsmäklarinspektionen, Svensk Mäklarstatistik.
The two-agent objection
The first reply to this will be that an American sale has two agents, one for the buyer and one for the seller, while a Swedish agent works for the seller only. That is true, and it does not rescue the number. Count both sides of every US sale and a Realtor still works on 5.6 sides a year, a quarter of what a Swedish agent does.
The Swedish agents confirm the count themselves. In the Swedish agents' association's member survey from November 2025, 48% of agents said they close 30 to 59 deals in an average year and 44% said 0 to 29. NAR's own member survey found the typical American agent worked on 9 sides in 2025, and that is among the members who answered a survey about their business.
We also used NAR membership rather than state licences on purpose. Plenty of licensed agents are not NAR members, so counting every licence in the country would push the American number lower still.
Nine countries
We ran the same division for every country where we could find both an agent count and a count of homes sold. Some of these are estimates, and the last column says how much to trust each row.
| Country | Agents | Homes sold, 2025 | Homes per agent | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netherlands | 7,600 | 239,000 | 31.4 | agents are a floor |
| Sweden | 7,465 | 171,200 | 22.9 | good |
| United Kingdom | 58,000 | 1,180,000 | 20.3 | estimate |
| Germany | 39,000 | 656,000 | 16.8 | rough, range 9 to 55 homes per agent |
| France | 140,000 | 921,000 | 6.6 | estimate |
| New Zealand | 15,692 | 80,000 | 5.1 | sales are a rough estimate |
| Australia | 142,000 | 531,457 | 3.7 | agents overstated |
| Canada | 160,000 | 470,314 | 2.9 | good |
| United States | 1,439,163 | 4,060,000 | 2.8 | good |
Source: ProfessionLens, September 2026. Data: see the dataset file for the source of every number.
The US and Canada sit at the bottom together, 2.8 and 2.9 homes per agent. Australia's 3.7 is too low, because its count of 142,000 includes property managers. Germany is the least certain row: estimates of how many people sell property there run from 12,000 to 70,000, which puts Germany anywhere between 9 and 55 homes per agent. The Dutch 31.4 only counts members of the two agent associations, so the real Dutch figure is lower.
Sweden and the US both have good numbers on both sides, which is why the headline uses them.
Where the numbers come from
- US agents: NAR membership on 18 June 2026. US sales: NAR existing-home sales for 2025, which leaves out new builds.
- Sweden agents: Fastighetsmäklarinspektionen register on 31 December 2025, from Mäklarsamfundet's Branschrapport 2025. Sweden sales: Svensk Mäklarstatistik for 2025.
- Every other row, with its source and URL, is in the dataset file below.
Data
Cite this
ProfessionLens, America could fire 1.2 million realtors and still sell every house, 2026-09-27, https://professionlens.com/research/america-could-fire-1-2-million-realtors-and-still-sell-every-house.