Key Details:
- Results from the latest Delta Real Estate Leadership Survey reveal brokers’ top challenges in 2023.
- Respondents are in leadership positions in the firms collectively responsible for over 60% of all real estate transactions in 2022.
The entire real estate industry is ready to face a rocky year ahead. But what are brokers’ top challenges in 2023?
The results from the latest Delta Real Estate Leadership Survey are in, with revealing insights from more than 100 individual brokers in the U.S. Respondents are in leadership positions in the firms collectively responsible for over 60% of all real estate transactions in 2022.
The survey asked them to identify the top five business challenges for leaders of real estate brokerages this year. It also posed questions related to training, technology and marketing trends, and their biggest peeves about tech providers.
Read on to learn how they answered.
The top 5 challenges real estate brokers are facing in 2023
According to the survey respondents, the real estate brokers’ top five challenges in 2023 are ranked as follows:
- Recruiting new agents (63%)
- Reduced profit margins (48%)
- Recruiting top producers (44%)
- Agent adoption of your technology (39%)
- Finding ways to reduce expenses (39%)
Delta Media Group’s CEO and owner, Michael Minard, is less than surprised by the results, as other independent surveys of real estate broker-owners have yielded similar answers, with recruiting and retention topping their lists of business challenges.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Brokerages recruit and retain agents to survive—and thrive.
The Delta survey also invited each respondent to share their own brokerage’s biggest challenge today.
The responses focused on three themes: brokerage profitability, training agents who have not experienced a market shift, and recruiting and retaining agents.
Other revealing Delta Survey results
The survey assessed leaders’ responses to a series of questions related to training, technology and market trends, and brokers’ biggest peeves with tech providers.
Here’s the breakdown of their answers:
- Training of new sales associates during the pandemic (2020-2021) — Respondents gave themselves a C grade;
- Training of newer agents in 2023—60% of respondents said they planned to increase their coaching and training for newer agents this year
- The single “best thing” your brokerage did in 2022—Answers focused on two things: (1) actions taken toward cutting costs and consolidation and (2) actions taken to improve agent recruiting and retention
- Biggest challenge today—Responses centered on three areas: (1) brokerage profitability, (2) training agents who lack experience with market shifts, and (2) recruiting and retaining agents
- Views about marketing and technology trends in 2023— 63% of real estate executives rated “all-in-one marketing platforms” as valuable or “highly valuable” to their brokerage.
- Also, 86% believe it’s important or “highly important” that real estate tech providers deliver ongoing innovation to keep real estate technology “cutting edge.”
- Biggest peeves about tech providers—Four common criticisms dominated the results: (1) lack of continuous innovation, (2) poor integration services and support, (3) over-promising and (4) not delivering results.
About the Delta Survey
The Delta Media Group conducted the survey in early December 2022, collecting responses from more than 100 real estate broker-owners and top brokerage executives.
The following breakdown shows the variety in brokerage transaction volumes among the survey respondents:
- 18% manage brokerages with over $3B to over $10B in projected transactions for 2022
- 23% manage brokerages with $1B to $3B
- 21% manage brokerages with $501M to $999M
- 38% manage brokerages with $500M or less in total 2022 transactions
Delta Survey respondents represent brokerages of all sizes:
- 9% manage brokerages with 20 agents or fewer
- 26% manage brokerages with 21 to 100 agents
- 41% manage brokerages with 101 to 500 agents
- 9% manage brokerages with 501 to 1,000 agents
- 15% manage brokerages with more than 1,000 agents
Click here to see more results from the full Delta Real Estate Leadership Survey.
