We Couldn't Be More Proud

Congratulations – I'm sure you all worked very hard for this!

Stevestan, your comment regarding Wall Street Journal is quite correct. The remainder of your assertions are quite wrong. The Wall Street Journal's only involvement is that they simply send out a letter asking agents if they want their results advertised. You will notice 3 agents' names hyper linked from this list. They are the 3 that paid for advertising. As you can see, WSJ doesn't make too much money off this thing. The list is actually done by Real Trends which is a real estate analytics group. Having worked at Redfin and Coldwell Banker (twice), it is widely known and accepted that any major brokerage enters their employees into this. At Coldwell Banker, the agent doesn't even do it — their corporate office preps the application. The same can be said for any other major brokerage. Could there be that sole individual broker out there that does a lot of business but has no idea about WSJ Top 100? Of course — however, very few, as it's widely known in the industry as a top achievement and most large brokerages award their agents who are listed with trophies, plaques, trips, etc.

Your statement regarding teams is incorrect. The definition of a team is one in which multiple agents sell houses under one name. For example, I now work in a team at Coldwell Banker. Anything that I sell goes under the name of the person whose team I am on. I am not credited individually for my sales beyond getting paid. The reason teams are formed are often to be able to get recognized for awards like this; however, more often it is to get a high split with your brokerage. The more volume you sell, the higher commission split you get, so creating a team allows all those sales to be put into one group and allows for a greater split for everybody. Each of those individual agents on that team likely have their own assistants, transaction coordinators, etc. For example, I now work on a team, yet I have people who work under me, as do some of the other agents on the team. The lead guy on our team personally has 5 of his own assistants. If you were to take any agent on the individual top 100, you would see the same. Any agent that produces that volume has assistants of some kind — the agents in silicon valley that I know that are on this list have multiple assistants that work for them. That does not make them a team per se. This is the case with Redfin agents — every sale that is represented on that list was sold by that singular agent. Yes, there are agents underneath them that sell houses, but those are not considered the lead agent's sales. The lead agent is just more of exactly that, a lead — an example, somebody to look up to. The reason I felt strongly to respond to your post is that while at Redfin, it was not abnormal but rather normal for me (and other lead agents) to commonly work over 100 hour weeks. There were many many days of waking up at 6 and working non stop, struggling to eat lunch (or dinner) and finally getting off the last phone call at 10 or 11 pm at night, lying down and setting the alarm for 6 am the next day to do it again. So, the sweat that was put in by Febe, Marshall, Trevor, Gina, Joyti certainly shouldn't be discounted as you have wrongly done. They deserve the recognition, and the accomplishment was certainly not misrepresented in any way, shape, or form.

Jim Holt