In 1995, I got a call from a client who asked:
“How much would I get for my house if I were to list it today?”
Normally, before answering a question like this, I’d spend up to an hour phoning all the top real estate agents I knew in Marin County near San Francisco. That’s where I was working as a real estate broker at the time.
They were all top-producers, like myself, so I trusted their input. And the collective insights they provided helped me serve my clients better.
But I couldn’t afford to spend a full hour calling up agents every time I needed insider information about a property or neighborhood.
So instead, I gathered all the email addresses of the very best agents in my market (after verifying they were top producers). That way, I could send all of them messages simultaneously.
Word quickly spread about what I was doing.
Soon, I was getting regular requests from fellow top agents wanting to send my email list their not-yet-on-MLS listings, buyer needs or other information.
And that’s how Top Agent Network was born.
More than 20 years later, a lot has changed. TAN now has over 9,900 members with chapters in 33 different U.S. markets.
But Top Agent Network is still based on the same idea:
When the very best agents in a local market work together, it makes real estate transactions smoother and faster for everyone involved: buyer, seller and agent.
And that will never change.
Anyone can get a real estate license. All they have to do is pass a simple exam.
And as a result of this, the real estate industry has become flooded with agents who are inexperienced, untrained or unprofessional. Even the National Association of Realtors, which thrives on a high Realtor membership, said in their 2015 DANGER Report that the main threat facing the real estate sector is “masses of marginal agents destroying the reputation” of all agents.
This is why agents can only become a member of TAN if their closed home sales put them in the top 10% of their local market. Consider this:
*according to MLS sales data