Agents: How do you choose a real estate brokerage in a slower market?

By Fred Renna  ·  Director of Business Growth and Recruiting, Broker

Every fall, agents take stock.

This one comes with a quieter market than most, and that changes what a brokerage needs to give you.

If you are weighing a move this year, judge a brokerage on what it does when deals are hard to find. Ask about lead flow, training, and who picks up the phone at nine on a Sunday night. The split matters, but it matters less than the number of deals you close.

What actually changes when the market slows down?

The work gets longer, and the margin for error gets thinner.

Prices are lower than a year ago in each of our markets, though by different amounts. In the GTA, TRREB reported that the August benchmark price, which tracks a typical home, was down 4.5% from last year. It was essentially flat from July.

In Hamilton, the Cornerstone Association of Realtors put the August benchmark price at $670,600, down 5.0% from a year earlier. In Waterloo Region, Cornerstone reported August benchmark prices down 6.0% in Kitchener-Waterloo and 4.2% in Cambridge.

In Oakville, the Oakville, Milton and District Real Estate Board put the August average single-family price at about $1.71 million. It was down 7.7% from last year. Because it is an average sold price, it moves with the mix of homes that happened to sell.

None of that means the market is broken. It means a deal now takes more conversations, more preparation, and more patience than it did in 2021. Buyers ask harder questions. Sellers need a real pricing conversation instead of a bidding war.

That is where the brokerage either shows up or does not. In a fast market, almost any structure works, because volume covers a lot of gaps. In a balanced one, the gaps are what you feel.

It also changes who succeeds. Agents who built a business on speed tend to struggle first. Agents who built one on relationships and follow up tend to hold steady. Neither group is smarter than the other. They are just suited to different conditions, and the conditions have changed.

What should you be asking a brokerage right now?

Ask where the business comes from, who trains you, who answers when a deal goes sideways, and what it all costs.

A few questions worth putting to any brokerage you are considering.

Where does business actually come from here? Ask how many of last year’s transactions started with a brokerage lead, a referral, or the agent’s own sphere.

Who trains me, and how often? Ask whether training is scheduled or improvised. Then ask whether it covers the parts of the job that are hard right now. Pricing a listing that has already sat on the market is a skill. So is holding a buyer who keeps waiting for rates to move.

What happens when a deal goes sideways? Ask who you call about a financing condition falling apart on a Friday afternoon. Then ask how quickly that person answers.

What am I actually paying for? Ask for the full cost, including desk fees, technology, marketing and any transaction charges, written out for a full year.

Pay attention to how the answers arrive, too. A brokerage that gives you real numbers is telling you something about how it will treat you later. A brokerage that changes the subject is also telling you something.

Does the commission split matter as much as it looks?

It matters, but it is usually not the number that decides your income. When you look at the math, volume consistently outweighs percentage.

Here is an illustrative example with round numbers. Say you close 10 transactions in a year at an average price of $900,000, earning 2.5% on your side. That is $225,000 in gross commission income, or GCI.

• On an 80/20 split with a $500 monthly fee, you keep roughly $174,000.
• On a 90/10 split with a $750 monthly fee, you keep roughly $193,500.

At first glance, the 90/10 split looks like the clear winner. It puts an extra $19,500 in your pocket.

Now change the variable that really drives growth: production. Say the support, tools and marketing at the 80/20 brokerage help you close two more deals a year. That takes you from 10 transactions to 12.

• 12 transactions on the 80/20 split: you keep roughly $210,000.

Even with the lower split, those two extra deals leave you $16,500 ahead of the 90/10 split at 10 deals.

Two extra transactions a year outperform a 10 point split difference. The split is not the main lever for growing your income. Your ability to scale is.

Splits are easy to compare, so they get compared. Support is hard to compare, so it gets assumed.

Choosing the right brokerage comes down to finding the systems, tools and support that help you close that next deal, again and again.

The same goes for fees. A low monthly fee is worth very little if you end up paying for photography, floor plans and print out of pocket on every listing. Add up a full year of real costs on the volume you actually do.

What does good culture look like from the inside?

Culture shows up in whether experienced agents answer questions they are not paid to answer.

You can test it before you join. Ask to speak with two agents who moved to the brokerage in the last year, and ask them one question: what surprised you? The answer tells you more than any recruiting deck. Ask what the office is like on an ordinary Tuesday morning.

Ask about the agents who left, as well. Every brokerage loses people, and a leader who can talk about it plainly is usually worth working for. Vague answers there tend to mean the same vagueness will greet you when you have a problem of your own.

Watch how the brokerage talks about the market, too. A brokerage that only sells optimism in a balanced market will not prepare you for a hard listing appointment. The Bank of Canada has kept its policy rate at 2.25% since October 2025, and held it again on September 2. The next decision is set for October 28. Fixed mortgage rates follow the bond market and can move even when the Bank does not. Your clients will ask you about that. You want a brokerage that has already talked it through with you.

When is the right time to make a move?

The practical answer is before your next busy stretch.

Moving takes time. Listings need to be transferred, marketing needs to be rebuilt, and your database needs to hear from you. Doing that while juggling six active files is how agents end up doing it badly. Autumn and the early part of the year tend to give you the room.

There is no single right answer on timing. What we would say is this. If you have spent a year thinking about it, the thinking is not the problem.

If you are curious what our team does differently, we are happy to have the conversation with no pressure attached. You can start that conversation with our team.

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