How Much Do New Real Estate Agents Really Make?

What the national data says

The National Association of REALTORS 2026 Member Profile covers 2025. It reported a median gross income of $59,200 and a typical nine transaction sides for individual agents. Members with 16 or more years of experience reported a median gross income of $88,500.

Those are medians for NAR members, including part-time agents. They are not a forecast for a new agent. Gross income is before your business expenses and taxes.

Why the first year is slower

• No pipeline yet. Most deals take months from first conversation to closing.
• Money comes at closing, so early work is unpaid.
• Costs start immediately: MLS, association dues, marketing, technology and insurance.
• You are learning while you are prospecting.

How to plan your money

Plan for several months with little or no income. A common piece of advice is to have six months of living costs saved before you start, and to keep a budget for business costs. Adjust for your own situation.

Track what you spend per closed deal, not just what you earn. If a lead source costs more than a closed deal earns, change it.

What moves the number

The people who earn more in year one usually do the same three things. They talk to a lot of people. They follow up. They use a brokerage or program that gives them real chances to talk to buyers and sellers. No source can promise a result.

How to estimate your own first year

National averages will not tell you your year. Build your own estimate in six steps.

• Decide how many closings you can reach, based on how many conversations you can have each week.
• Estimate the average sale price in your market.
• Multiply by the commission rate you expect.
• Subtract what your brokerage keeps, including every fee.
• Subtract business costs and set money aside for taxes.
• Compare the result with what you need each month to live.

Costs that surprise new agents

• License, exam and education costs.
• Association and MLS dues.
• E&O insurance, if you carry it yourself.
• Marketing, photos and signs.
• Taxes. Independent contractors generally pay their own, including self-employment tax. Ask a tax professional how much to set aside.

What the NAR Member Profile says by years of experience

The newest edition is the National Association of REALTORS 2026 Member Profile. It reports on calendar year 2025. NAR's public summary gives three income points that matter to you. The median gross income from real estate for all members was $59,200, up from $58,100 the year before. Members with 16 or more years in the business had a median of $88,500, up from $78,900. Members with two years or less had a median of $8,000, just below the $8,100 reported a year earlier.

Read the low number slowly. Half of the newer agents in that group earned less than $8,000 in gross income. NAR also reported that this group had a median of two individual transaction sides and $330,000 in sales volume. The typical member overall had nine sides. Members with six or more years had a median of 10 sides.

NAR's public pages did not publish the full spread of income bands, and they gave no median for the three-to-five or six-to-15 year groups. Do not trust a blog that fills those in without a link to NAR. The only distribution points I could confirm are the ones above.

Here is what the survey counts and does not count. It is a survey of NAR members, so licensed agents who never joined NAR are not in it. It reports gross income earned from real estate activities. NAR reports business expenses separately, and the median total was $9,530 in 2025, up from $8,010, with vehicle costs the largest category at $1,580. So treat the income figure as before expenses. The expense median covers all members, not newer agents, so you cannot simply subtract one number from the other. The profile also does not tell you how many hours a member worked, and it includes part-time agents. It describes what happened to members. It does not forecast what will happen to you.

What federal wage data says for Texas and Dallas-Fort Worth

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes two things that agents quote. The first is the Occupational Outlook Handbook. For 2025 it lists median pay of $52,830 for real estate sales agents, about 427,000 sales agent jobs nationwide, and about 54 percent of sales agents as self-employed. It says brokers and agents earn most of their income from commissions, and that earnings may be irregular, especially for beginners.

The second is the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program, or OEWS. For real estate sales agents, the most recent occupation tables I could open were for May 2023. They showed 197,720 jobs nationally, a median annual wage of $54,300, and a mean of $69,610. The 10th percentile was $31,410 and the 90th was $119,590. For Texas the table listed 23,810 jobs and a mean annual wage of $78,390. For the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area it listed 8,400 jobs and a mean annual wage of $81,800.

Now the catch. OEWS counts wage and salary workers at nonfarm establishments. In its own FAQ, BLS says the survey does not cover the self-employed. Commissions are included in wages when an employee gets them. Most agents are independent contractors under a sponsoring broker, and the Handbook says over half are self-employed. So OEWS describes a smaller group of agents who are on a payroll, such as some staff agents and licensed employees of builders or property firms. It is a useful guide to the market, but it is not the paycheck of a new independent agent.

Wages and commissions are also different in how you live with them. A wage arrives every two weeks. A commission arrives at closing, often months after the first conversation. As a self-employed agent you pay your own taxes and your own business costs. See the first-year budget before you compare any wage number to your own plans.

Why averages mislead new agents

A median tells you the middle of a group. It does not tell you which end of the group you will sit in. The NAR figures mix agents who work full time with agents who sell a home or two a year. They mix people with a large sphere with people who started with none. A new agent looking at $59,200 may think that is the starting line. The gap between $8,000 and $88,500 says the number depends heavily on years, habits and opportunity.

Build your own number instead. Use this worksheet. The figures in the table are ILLUSTRATIVE round numbers, not data and not a promise. Replace each one with a figure from your market, your brokerage's written fee schedule and your own plan. For a closer look at fees, read commission splits and fees explained.

Read the worksheet like a broker would

Notice three things. First, the costs do not move when closings move. That is why a slow year can leave you with almost nothing even with a few sales. Second, closings are the number you control least in year one, but conversations are the number you control most. Work backward. If you need four closings, ask how many serious conversations it usually takes, and see how many leads it takes to close a deal. Third, timing matters. A deal you start in month eight may pay in month twelve or later. Plan cash for the gap, not just the total.

What decides first-year income: a checklist, not a forecast

No table can tell you your income. This one lists the factors that decide it, so you can see where you are strong and where you are not. Check each row against your honest answer today.

Check before you rely on this

This guide reflects the sources named below, read in early October 2026. Fees, rules, forms and market numbers change, and some details here may already be out of date.

Confirm anything that affects your money, your license or a contract with the source itself, such as TREC, the National Association of Realtors, your local association or your sponsoring broker. If something looks different from what you find, trust the source and let us know. This guide is general information for licensed agents and people becoming agents. It is not legal, tax or financial advice.