Friedberg @ 00:37:30Inconclusive
As the post‑settlement commission regime in U.S. residential real estate takes hold, between roughly 500,000 and 1,000,000 of the current ~1.4 million National Association of Realtors members will, over the coming years, find the profession insufficiently lucrative and exit the industry.
So there is a long tail. So there's probably a third of those folks who are already kind of sub living standards in terms of income. Maybe half of them won't be able to make enough money in this new fee regime that it'll no longer be an attractive proposition to be a real estate agent for maybe half 1 million to 1 million people over time that are agents today.View on YouTube
Explanation
Available data show only a modest decline in National Association of Realtors (NAR) membership so far, far short of the 500,000–1,000,000 exits Friedberg predicted, but his timeframe (“over time,” “over the coming years”) is too vague and clearly multi‑year, so it’s premature to call the prediction right or wrong.
What’s happened so far
- NAR ended 2023 with about 1,554,604 members, down roughly 26,000 (‑1.7%) from a year earlier. (wrenews.com)
- As of Oct. 31, 2024, NAR reported 1,526,631 members, still “near its all‑time high,” only ~2% below 2023 year‑end. (nar.realtor)
- A January 2025 tally based on state counts put membership at about 1.498 million, the lowest since March 2024 but still close to 1.5M. (realestatenews.com)
- At NAR’s June 5, 2025 board meeting, the treasurer reported 1,453,690 members as of May 31, 2025—a drop of roughly 100k–120k from late 2023, and still above NAR’s own 1.4M forecast for 2025. (nar.realtor)
So, roughly 100k–150k net members have left since the pre‑settlement peak—well below the 500k–1,000k contraction Friedberg anticipated.
Why it’s still too early to judge
- Friedberg talks about changes playing out “over time” and “over the coming years,” not by 2025 specifically. The core structural shifts from the commission settlement are only partly in effect: some practice changes started in 2024, and a key rule change—NAR no longer recommending that MLSs require NAR membership—doesn’t take effect until the 2026 MLS handbook, which could accelerate exits later in the decade. (barrons.com)
- Given that the horizon is implicitly multi‑year and the main post‑settlement membership shocks (like optional MLS‑NAR linkage) are still ahead, current data neither confirm nor definitively refute a long‑run 500k–1M decline.
Because the observed drop so far is much smaller than predicted but the stated timeframe has clearly not run its course, the fairest status as of November 30, 2025 is “inconclusive (too early).”