When Jessica Poulos started selling homes 22 years ago, the letter R beside an agent's name carried more weight with buyers than it does now. Twice in the past two years, the designated broker at Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Northwest Home Team has put one question to the 76 agents she leads: "Do we want to stay within NAR or pull away from it?"

They stayed in the association, but the question has traveled well beyond dues. In an Inman Intel Index survey fielded from late November into early December 2025, 32 percent of agent respondents said they had considered leaving the industry at some point in the previous 12 months. That was one and a half times the share who said so heading into that year. The survey draws on Inman's engaged reader community rather than a random sample of licensees, and most of the agents who thought about walking away never did, though some moved to a different brokerage instead.

The exodus that analysts forecast after the 2024 commission settlement has arrived as a slow leak rather than a flood. It is concentrated among newer agents with thin pipelines and no base of past clients. The agents who stay, according to the National Association of Realtors' own 2026 Member Profile, tend to be the ones who built a book of repeat and referral business before the market turned.

The Collapse That Never Came

In 2024, a KBW forecast projected that separating buyer and seller commissions could push 60 to 80 percent of Realtors out of the business. A year later, NAR chief executive Nykia Wright said membership was expected to fall to 1.2 million, according to comments reported by Crain's and The Real Deal. The pandemic peak had been roughly 1.6 million.

Neither number has materialized. As of June 18, NAR counted 1,439,163 members, compared with 1,463,352 a year earlier, a decline of less than 2 percent. The typical member now has 13 years of experience, up from 12, and the median member is 57 years old. In the 2026 Member Profile, 75 percent of Realtors said they were "very certain" they would remain active in real estate for at least two more years, with another 17 percent somewhat certain and 8 percent unsure.

"The real estate market has been operating under suppressed conditions for more than three years," said Jessica Lautz, NAR's deputy chief economist. "And yet, the typical Realtor [member of NAR] continues to gain experience and stay committed to the profession."

Membership rolls lag behind real departures, since agents who pay their dues in January often stay on the books long after they stop writing contracts, and a member profile by definition surveys the people who stayed. The sharper numbers sit inside the report, in the distance between agents who arrived recently and agents who have been around long enough for their clients to come back.

Who Sits on the Fence

Intel's portrait of the 2025 fence-sitter is mostly a portrait of an empty calendar. Sixty-four percent of the agents who considered leaving said their buyer pipeline was substantially lighter than a year earlier, compared with 37 percent of the fence-sitters surveyed the previous December. The share who had completed no transactions at all over the prior year climbed from just under 7 percent to 11 percent. Fifty-nine percent said at least some buyer clients had tried to negotiate their compensation, up from 45 percent.

NAR's data describes the same divide from the other end. Members with two years or less in the business closed a median of two transaction sides in 2025 on $330,000 in sales volume, HousingWire reported from the profile. The typical individual brokerage specialist closed nine sides on $2.7 million. Members with 16 or more years reported a median gross income of $88,500, up from $78,900 the year before, against a median of $59,200 for the membership as a whole.

The typical member drew 28 percent of business from past clients and customers in 2025, up from 20 percent a year earlier. For agents with 16 or more years in the business, repeat business made up 49 percent of the total, and for agents with two years or less it was zero. A newer agent opens every month at the bottom of the funnel, while the veteran opens it with half a pipeline already willing to pick up the phone.

The Book That Holds an Agent in Place

"The growth of teams and the rise in repeat and referral business reflect how Realtors are adapting," Lautz said, describing a membership that has leaned on long client relationships to get through tight inventory and stretched affordability. Twenty-one percent of Realtors worked on a team in 2025, and the typical team, usually four people, closed a median of 32 transaction sides on $17.5 million in volume.

Many members also widened what they sell. NAR found agents adding relocation services, residential property management, commercial brokerage, land development and homeownership consulting alongside their residential work, which gives a slow quarter a second source of income instead of a single dry well.

The referral side of that book is rarely as full as it could be. Infinity has reported on the gap between buyers who would recommend their agent and buyers who actually have, a distance of 73 percent to 39 percent. Closing it takes a system worked every week rather than goodwill left to chance.

The Cost of Staying Licensed

Holding on costs money in a year when the commission checks thin out. Median business expenses for Realtors rose to $9,530 in 2025 from $8,010, with vehicle costs the largest line, and that figure sits on top of the association fees that have become their own source of resentment. In an Inman survey this August, 55 percent of agent respondents said they would rather belong to no association at all.

Poulos weighed that frustration against what membership gave her agents and still chose to stay, but she put the bill in plain terms when Inman spoke with her in September. "It's actually expensive to be a Realtor. You have your MLS dues, you have your licensing dues, and that doesn't even guarantee that you'll have clients or an edge with consumers," she said.

The fence-sitters who changed brokerages rather than careers left a trail in the data. Agents who considered quitting in 2024 and switched firms instead were most likely to say they wanted a better commission split. The 2025 group of brokerage-hoppers was more likely to have moved in search of better technology.

A Fourth Quarter That Tests the Stayers

The market heading into the holidays offers little relief. Existing-home sales ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.99 million in September, the second straight month under 4 million, while unsold inventory rose to 1.6 million homes, the highest level since November 2019. Freddie Mac's 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.86 percent for the month. Only 8 percent of agents surveyed by NAR expected buyer traffic to rise over the next three months, down from 20 percent a year earlier.

"Supply is not really an issue anymore," Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist, said on a press call Tuesday, Inman reported. "So it's really the demand that is contracting." He said fourth-quarter closings "will clearly be down, maybe even measurably down" if rates hold well above 7 percent.

Agents are carrying that weight into the rest of their lives as well. Over the summer, 77 percent of agents in Inman's monthly survey said they were concerned or very concerned about the economy, up from 65 percent over the same months in 2025. The war in Iran had pushed fuel prices higher, and mortgage rates climbed back toward 7 percent from just under 6. "The state of the union and uncertainty is causing people to sit on the sidelines," one San Diego agent wrote.

For an agent deciding whether to ride out a quarter like this one, the profile's numbers point toward the people who already trust them. That means past clients called before the holidays and a database clean enough to act on in January. The hardest part of that routine is often the first dial. Researchers named the reluctance back in 2000, and Infinity explored it in its look at sales call anxiety and the coping tactics that hold up. For agents who decide the license has run its course, the next door need not require a four-year degree. Sonic Boom has reported on how Washington will now help pay for an eight-week career reboot.

Bill Lublin has watched more of these cycles than most. The Century 21 broker-owner began his career in 1971, when sales associates could not join NAR, and signed up in 1973 as soon as a rule change let him. His first broker, Ray Richmond, gave him advice he still repeats: "Just go down there, try not to break anything, and leave it better when you leave than it was when you got there."