REAL ESTATE // UPDATED SEPTEMBER 2026
Real Estate Reputation and Trust Statistics 2026
Real estate is the one category on this site where the client’s own trade body has already made the case for reputation work. Sellers name an agent’s reputation as the single biggest factor in who they hire, and name commission almost nine times less often. Every figure below is dated and linked.
7 statistics · 5 sources · every one dated and linked
35%
Of sellers name the agent’s reputation as the single most important factor in choosing who lists their home. Honest and trustworthy follows at 21%. The agent’s commission is named by 4% and professional designations by 1%.
National Association of Realtors, Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends · 2025
70% vs 37%
Of US adults have a lot of or some trust in information from local news organizations, versus social media sites. National news sits between them at 56%. Trust in local news has fallen from 82% in 2016 but remains the highest of the three.
Pew Research Center, 5,195 US adults · 2025
WHAT DECIDES IT
Reputation, then honesty, then everything else
35%
Of sellers name the agent’s reputation as the single most important factor in choosing who lists their home. Honest and trustworthy follows at 21%. The agent’s commission is named by 4% and professional designations by 1%.
National Association of Realtors, Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends ·2025
Reputation is named almost nine times more often than commission. It is also the one factor on the list that cannot be bought, discounted or printed on a card.
23% / 19% / 15%
The factors buyers name as most important in choosing an agent: experience, then honest and trustworthy, then the agent’s reputation. Professional designations came last, named by 1%.
National Association of Realtors ·2025
All three of the top three are earned in public over time rather than bought. The one thing an agent can simply purchase, a designation, ranks last of eleven.
98%
Of buyers rated honesty and integrity as a very important quality in an agent, the highest of nine qualities tested. Skills with technology ranked last at 47%.
75% / 74%
Of sellers said a positive general reputation in the community, and a strong recent sales history, were important in choosing an agent. Both outranked a referral from a friend, relative or colleague, at 57%.
Zillow Group Population Science, Consumer Housing Trends Report for Agents ·2025
Zillow has a commercial interest in findings about agent discovery. Its methodology is published and its sample is large and weighted, and this result is consistent with NAR’s independent measurement.
81%
Of sellers contact only one agent before choosing, and 75% of buyers interview only one. The listing appointment is not where most of these decisions get made.
National Association of Realtors ·2025
Repeated from the SEO page because it is the fact everything else on this one rests on. If there is no comparison, being the one name a stranger already trusts is the whole game.
THE FIELD YOU ARE COMPETING IN
Experience is the median, not the differentiator
13 years
Median years of experience for a Realtor, up from 12 the year before. 11% of members have a year or less, and the median tenure with their current firm is six years.
National Association of Realtors, Member Profile, 5,116 responses ·2026
Buyers name experience as their top selection factor and the median agent has thirteen years of it. Experience is table stakes, so it cannot be the thing that distinguishes you.
70% vs 37%
Of US adults have a lot of or some trust in information from local news organizations, versus social media sites. National news sits between them at 56%. Trust in local news has fallen from 82% in 2016 but remains the highest of the three.
Pew Research Center, 5,195 US adults ·2025
Cross-industry: this is about news trust generally, not real estate coverage. It is the closest defensible evidence that local earned media outranks social channels on trust, and it should be quoted as what it is.
HOW OLD IS THE EVIDENCE
Every figure, by the year its study was published.
Marketing pages quote statistics without dates because the dates are usually embarrassing. This is the distribution for the 7 figures above, oldest 2025, newest 2026. Where a column is short, that year simply produced less research worth citing.
CHECKED AND REJECTED
Claims about real estate agents we could not verify.
These circulate widely. We went looking for the original study behind each one and could not find it. They are listed here so nobody repeats them, including us.
“87% of real estate agents fail within five years”
Usually attributed to The National Association of Realtors
NAR does not publish a failure or attrition rate at all. Its Member Profile, the only plausible home for such a figure, reports a median of 13 years of experience, 11% of members with a year or less, and three quarters very certain they will still be active in two years. The claim circulates through brokerage recruiting content with no study behind it.
“Press mentions and best-of list placements measurably increase agent selection”
Usually attributed to PR and marketing vendors
We looked for this in NAR, Zillow, Redfin, Pew and academic sources and found nothing. No primary study measures whether media coverage affects how a consumer chooses an agent. Everything in circulation on this is assertion. The defensible case rests on what buyers and sellers say drives the decision, not on a measured effect of coverage.
Plain answers.
Does reputation actually beat commission in choosing an agent?
By a wide margin, on the industry’s own data. Sellers name the agent’s reputation as the single most important factor at 35% and honest and trustworthy at 21%, while the agent’s commission is named by 4%. Buyers rank experience, honesty and reputation as their top three, with professional designations last at 1%. Reputation is also the factor you can least easily buy, which is why it holds.
If referrals still dominate, why do I need anything else?
Because referrals are 40% of how buyers find an agent, not all of it, and they say nothing about the seller with nobody to ask. 81% of sellers contact exactly one agent, and that agent gets chosen from what a stranger can find. Zillow found reputation in the community (75%) and a strong recent sales history (74%) both outranked a referral from a friend, relative or colleague (57%) when sellers described what mattered to them.
Is local press worth more than social media?
On trust, yes, though the evidence is about news generally rather than real estate. Pew found 70% of US adults have at least some trust in information from local news organizations against 37% for social media sites, a gap that has held even as trust in local news declined from 82% in 2016. There is no study measuring whether a press mention changes how someone picks an agent, and we are not going to invent one.
What is the honest case for a PR program in real estate?
That the decision happens before you are in the room, and it turns on things you cannot advertise. 81% of sellers contact only one agent. Sellers name reputation first at 35% and commission at 4%, and buyers rank paid designations last. The median Realtor has thirteen years of experience, so experience alone does not separate you either. What a stranger can verify about you, in places they already trust, is what is left.
WHERE ALL OF THIS CAME FROM
5 sources, listed in full.
Ordered by how many figures on this page each one carries. Every link goes to the organization that ran the study, not to a summary of it.
Want to know where you stand?
We run a free audit showing exactly which real estate agents get named by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Mode for the queries your buyers use, and where you sit.