Instructions & FAQs

It is an annual, national awards ranking sponsored by REAL Trends—the Trusted Source—and Tom Ferry International, advertised in The Wall Street Journal. Designees are recognized as the top one-tenth of one percent of more than 1.4 million licensed Realtors® nationwide.

This list ranks the most productive agents and teams by state based on closed transaction sides and closed volume. In 2020, more than 14,000 real estate professionals from every state are featured. 2021 will be the 9th year this ranking is published. This ranking is not associated with The Wall Street Journal.

To qualify for inclusion in our America’s Best Ranking, an individual agent must have closed at least 50 transaction sides or $20 million in sales volume in 2020. For real estate teams, the minimum is 75 transaction sides or $30 million in closed sales volume. (2021 rankings are based off 2020 numbers.)

If you answer YES to either of these questions, then you are a TEAM and must provide numbers for your entire team.

• Do you market yourself as a “team” or “group” on your website/marketing?
• Do you have any licensed assistants?

All those who answer ‘no’ are considered an Individual Agent for the purpose of our rankings.

NOTE: REAL Trends will carefully review websites and other sources to ensure the accuracy of the placement of individuals vs. teams. Any individual or team that submits incorrectly will be moved to their correct category or removed from the rankings.

All numbers are based on closed residential business for the 2020 calendar year. Only ONE form of verification is needed. You MUST provide verification, those who do not provide verification will be removed from the rankings.

• A signed letter (click here for sample letter) from the broker/owner (Note: broker/owners cannot sign off on their own submissions.)
• The local or state Realtor® association which the sales professional or sales team has a membership
• Copy of 1099 or business tax return for 2020 (please black out any confidential information, i.e. date of birth, social security number, etc.)
• Sales statistics from the national network in which the sales professional or sales team has its affiliation.

Off-market sales: a copy of the HUD statement from the sale (please black out name of buyer/ seller or other confidential information) or letter from an escrow officer acknowledging that agent to the sale used their title company.

For our rankings, we only count RESIDENTIAL business. There are two transaction sides to each transaction, the selling side and the buying side. When you represent both sides of a transaction that is two sides. When you handle only one side, it is obviously only one side. For volume, when you complete both sides of a transaction you should double the sales volume for reporting to us.

NOT COUNTED–leases, rentals or times share units, commercial sales, referrals, or Lots for land.

Co-listings–should count as one-half of a transaction and thus the volume should also be divided in half.

If a commercial property is bought to be turned into residential, it cannot be counted. The sale will later be counted when the newly developed residential deal sells.

The submission fee is $125. This fee goes towards administration costs and does NOT guarantee placement on the rankings.

If so, please contact lsmith@realtrends.com as it is the responsibility of the sales professional or team to submit verification of data from both companies. You should not rely on your firm to do so.