Recruiting Real Estate Agents: Your 2025 Blueprint

Why Recruiting Real Estate Agents is Crucial

Statistics show that the sales of existing and new homes have increased, creating an opportunity for agents and brokers to grow their teams.

Most people struggle to recruit real estate agents, but it’s not their fault.

The recruitment process can be challenging, especially if you’re new to hiring.

You can miss a critical step or two, preventing you from attracting, hiring, and retaining the best of the best.

Recruiting real estate agents today is vital for several reasons:

1. You can only do so much on your own or with a small team. Expanding revenue is directly related to the size of your team. It’s taking off the limiters of your growth.
2. Recruitment is an opportunity to help agents with their growth, potentially changing their lives.
3. Success also hinges on the quality of your team. Top performers bring specialized knowledge, their networks, and a commitment to closing deals.
4. Sustainable long-term growth is only possible with agents who can grow and maintain a healthy sales pipeline, manage closings, and provide an excellent client experience.
5. Breaking into new industries or areas requires 5-star talent with specific expertise or local knowledge and connections.
6. Real estate is a relationship-driven business. Your goal is to recruit agents with strong interpersonal skills and integrity to build client confidence, trust in your brand, and future referrals.
7. Real estate agents have a wealth of options. They can choose to join brokerages or agencies bigger than yours, with more resources, or they can venture out on their own. Now it’s harder than ever to attract quality agents. A strong recruitment process ensures you retain agents for years, saving tens of thousands of dollars.

Your goal is not to add as many bodies as possible to follow up with leads. Rather, it’s about building a team that aligns with your long-term vision. You want to recruit real estate agents that are proactive, motivated, and capable of fulfilling their goals through your business.

Creating an Effective Recruitment Process

Recruiting real estate agents as a team leader, for your agency, or your brokerage requires a strong process and strategy.

You should aim to attract real estate agents in the same manner you attract potential clients or customers because, in many respects, the concept is the same. The top talent is already employed or motivated to work on their own.

Furthermore, there are other teams, agencies, and brokerages, some with more experience and resources recruiting the same talent.

Competition can be fierce.

Inexperienced agents are looking for support and growth, so you must show how you can help them.

Experienced agents have leverage, so you must provide value and build trust, even if you’re new.

Thanks to the competitive nature of recruiting real estate agents, some teams take on a scattergun approach—adding as many agents as possible without considering fit or long-term goals.

But if you’re serious about building a high-performing team, it’s important to think about how to structure a real estate team from the ground up. A clear team structure helps ensure that every new hire has a defined role, making collaboration smoother and scaling easier.

Just get as many agents on your team as possible and the rest will work itself out, right?

This is an unsustainable strategy that will ultimately hurt your reputation with clients and hiring future agents.

We want to be more targeted with recruitment. Taking the time to create a plan can help you map out your unique value proposition, find more of your ideal agents, and form partnerships.

Define Your Recruitment Objectives

First, Identify and write down what you want to achieve by recruiting agents.

• Do you want to increase your revenue? By how much?
• How many more real estate agents can you manage?
• Do you want to expand into new real estate niches?
• Are you looking for new or high-performing agents?
• Do you want to handle more leads?
• Do you want more team diversity?

Your goals will determine how many agents you’d like to add to your team, experience requirements, and incentives. Objectives should also align with your vision or the long-term goals for your team or brokerage. Finding the individuals who fit your vision now can lower churn and turnover rates later.

What’s In It For Them?

One of the hardest things you can do is convince someone to buy something you value but s/he does not. Recruiting real estate agents is pitching or selling agents on the idea of working with you long-term, whether that’s joining your brokerage or coming on full-time with your agency.

Through your conversations, recruitment ads, outreach, or cold pitches, you should share the benefits of working with you. Paint a picture so that agents can see your real estate value proposition, where they fit, and how they can grow.

Understand What Motivates Real Estate Agents

Real estate agents become your partners, so you should find out what motivates them to perform or work with teams. If you’re unsure where to start, meet with your existing team members or peers to find out more about them:

• Find out what motivates them.
• Uncover their goals and challenges.
• Learn what are turn-offs or deal-breakers.
• Ask them what kind of support or resources they expect.
• Find out the best compensation and bonuses they received.

This info can help you find and nurture potential real estate agents to possibly join your team. Modeling your recruitment process based on feedback can help you develop the right incentives. It can also help you determine the ideal budget and offerings for your recruitment efforts.

Bonus Offering Ideas for Recruiting Real Estate Agents

Real estate agents will expect competitive commissions and compensation structures. The national commission average is around 5.7%. Real estate agent salaries vary significantly depending on state and niche.

Use up-to-date data to offer competitive compensation.
At the same time, you’ll want to offer more than just money. Agents want to feel you’re invested in their growth and overall lives so offer benefits such as:

• Vacation or Personal Time Off
• Training and Personal Development programs
• Personal brand development
• A company car
• Guaranteed leads
• Remote or hybrid opportunities
• A marketing budget for Direct Mail Marketing
• Insurance, health care, gym, or company-supplied equipment.

Develop and Implement a Recruitment Plan

Now it’s time to create and execute a step-by-step plan for recruiting real estate agents effectively.

This is the process you’ll follow, which you can scale depending on how many agents you intend to recruit.

Think of your recruitment plan in the same way you would a lead generation funnel.

At the top lies all the ways you can find or attract potential hires.

These all go into a database you’ll contact. Organize prospects based on experience, specialization, location, and performance metrics. There are software and CRM tools that are designed for the real estate management process. Use these to remain organized and to help you follow up on time.

You’ll then reach out to them. Either do this yourself or hire someone to help you to contact them and set up meetings. Individuals who you’ve pinpointed as high-quality agents you may need to nurture more closely.

Unless explicitly applying for the role, arrange to meet with hires just to learn more about them, share experiences, and determine where you can add value. Some of these interactions will be interviews.

Continue the process until you find the ideal candidates to discuss work opportunities and pitch an offer to work with you. Share your vision, culture, and incentives, while letting them know you’re open to negotiation.

To summarize:

• Determine the avenues to find candidates
• Use these avenues to find candidates
• Compile and organize them in a database or CRM like Relitix or Brokerkit
• Contact ideal candidates
• Meet and build rapport
• Shortlist
• Offer
• Repeat process accordingly

The recruitment process is often ongoing, especially if you’re looking for top talent or multiple agents. If you stop the process, you can miss out on finding amazing talent when they’re free or end up scrambling to fill roles if someone leaves unexpectedly.

6 Strategies For Recruiting Real Estate Agents

High-quality leads matter. The same goes for recruiting real estate agents. The goal is to find high-quality prospects to add to your recruitment pipeline. You can use job boards like Indeed or local real estate job boards to find talent.

While effective, you will be competing with larger companies and get a larger pool of unqualified applicants.
Along with job boards, consider these 6 additional strategies to find and add agents to your pipeline.

1. Attend Real Estate Industry Events

Whip out your calendar and mark down the upcoming conferences, workshops, masterminds, and industry events. Not only can you meet potential clients and build new relationships, but you can also find potential agents to join your team. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with and shortlist some of the best in the business.

2. Ask For Referrals

The real estate agents you know, like, and trust may know others like them. Contact your peers and ask them for referrals. This makes it easier to break the ice and schedule meetings. You’ll also find higher-quality talent from people who can vouch for them.

3. Leverage Your MLS and Local Real Estate Schools

A Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is a database that shares property listings, expired listings, and other valuable pieces of data between real estate professionals. You can also leverage this data for recruiting real estate agents. For instance, you can filter the list in your area by performance. Agents who are struggling, for instance, or top performers can be potential leads for recruitment.
Local real estate schools have hungry, up-and-coming agents. Connect with them and show interest in hiring even before they’ve obtained their licenses.

4. Use Social Media Effectively

A simple social media post can help you find amazing talent. Post a recruitment video on Instagram or TikTok. Place a static ad or add your desire to recruit as a Call To Action (CTA) on high-performing posts. You can also use social media marketing to send Direct Messages to potential candidates, building a rapport over time that may lead to recruitment.

5. Offer Sign-Up Bonuses

Ask your team to help you with recruiting real estate agents. Offer a monetary bonus to the person who recommends a successful candidate. It’s a great strategy to find highly qualified real estate agents.

6. Host Real Estate Agent Events

We’re big on hosting client appreciation events to build your brand and nurture leads. Why not apply that same concept to landing recruits? Host a mixer, pay for a masterclass, or run a paid workshop. At the end of the event, let them know you’re hiring. Gather contact details and follow up accordingly.

Along with job boards, these should be your sources to find high-quality candidates.

Becoming an Attractive, Valuable Leader

Want to know how to recruit real estate agents on autopilot?

With your personal brand.

As a real estate agent or broker, your online personal brand matters.

Not only can it attract potential buyers and sellers, but fellow agents.

Building a personal brand can bring you high-quality inbound leads.

These agents already know you and like you through your content, talks, podcasts, and results.
Use social media to share valuable information, show your company culture, and express your values.

Podcasts and video content on YouTube should be part of personal brand building. Through showing listings, interviews, How-To’s, and sharing valuable long-form content, the hiring process feels almost automatic.

Creating a Long-Term Nurturing Plan

It’s not enough to get a steady stream of potential agents to join your team.

Recruiting real estate agents in 2025 is all about relationship building.

Carve out some time in your schedule to nurture some of the top prospects on your radar.

Stay in regular contact with these recruits through non-intrusive methods.

Share interesting data, market trends, or marketing tools that have saved you time. Invite them to events like open houses, career coaching sessions, or educational workshops.

Use these events to keep building rapport and reiterate your interest in working together.
Be patient, yet persistent, gauging the individual’s responsiveness to work offers.

Understand that agents may not be ready to switch brokerages immediately. The better the agent, the longer it may take.

At the same time, you should know when to walk away.

Perhaps now is not the right time.

Keep up communication, but set a timeframe or number of interactions when it’s time to move on.

Retaining Real Estate Agents

Recruiting real estate agents can help you grow your business, but retaining top talent is the rocket fuel you need to succeed.

Here are some tips to retain your talent when they finally join your team:

Create a Simple Onboarding Process

After recruiting real estate agents, you want to create a seamless transfer for your new team member. Friction leads to frustration. Gather all details in advance. Set up systems, payroll, insurance, and other requirements beforehand. Ensure there is a smooth transition with CRM and other applications.

Be Flexible with Technology Solutions

Some agents are accustomed to using certain systems and processes on their own or with a previous brokerage. Don’t be rigid with your rules. Give them some time to transition to your tools or consider letting them continue using their tools of choice if it helps with efficiency.

Provide Tools that Increase Agent Productivity

As a leader, you want to remove all the resistance from work while helping them to find ways to increase their output. Provide tools to optimize productivity. This may be new technology, real estate farming tools, access to new applications, or providing support on tasks that once took up additional time.

Offer Motivating Commission Structures

Money was likely a factor in choosing to work with you. Figure out the best commission structure that works for your team. Providing higher commissions or a tiered approach could help your new team stick around for years.

Add Some Cool Incentives

Don’t hesitate to sweeten the deal. Add them to the team’s incentive plan or come up with a structure that rewards excellent performance. Get feedback from agents to determine their likes, and put a structure in place so they can hit those targets.

Invest in Their Overall Growth

The best teams understand that we are complex individuals. Real estate is just a part of overall growth. A well-rounded individual is more likely to perform well and stick around, especially if you’re willing to invest in their growth. From education to gym memberships, show them that it’s more than a job.

Ask for Feedback

After the 3, 6, and 12-month mark, meet with your recruits and get feedback. Find out if they feel supported and valued. Ask them about any gaps or improvement areas they’ve noticed. Listen and take action.

Recognize and Celebrate Agent Success

Thank you goes a long way. You should celebrate everyone’s achievements and successes. Your new real estate agents are no exception. They’ve been hired to produce results, but that does not mean you should not acknowledge them when they do. From a celebratory work dinner to a social media post, there are countless ways to show that you see them.

Final Thoughts

Recruiting real estate agents – and talented ones at that – will take time and effort.

You’ll need a solid plan that is comparable to your client lead generation.

Your first step is to create an effective strategy, and then use multiple avenues to find top talent.

From there, it’s all about nurturing and pitching.

While you’re doing that, make sure you build your brand and business so that it naturally attracts top talent. This includes creating a personal and business brand that focuses on a strong culture and results.

Remember, this is an ongoing process. It will take time to recruit real estate agents who have the skills and characteristics you’re looking for.

But it’s worth it. The right team can significantly increase your revenue and transform your business for the better.