With total home sales expected to reach six million, their highest level since 2006, the personal finance website WalletHub conducted an in-depth analysis of 2016’s Best & Worst Cities to Be a Real Estate Agent.
To find out which cities are the most conducive to a healthy career as a realtor, WalletHub’s analysts compared the 150 most populated cities across 13 key metrics, ranging from sales per agent to annual median wage for real-estate agents to housing-market health index.
| Best Cities to Be a Real Estate Agent | Worst Cities to Be a Real Estate Agent |
| 1 Denver, CO | 141 Milwaukee, WI |
| 2 Irvine, CA | 142 Hialeah, FL |
| 3 Seattle, WA | 143 Mobile, AL |
| 4 Austin, TX | 144 Philadelphia, PA |
| 5 Aurora, CO | 145 Aurora, IL |
| 6 Portland, OR | 146 Brownsville, TX |
| 7 Indianapolis, IN | 147 Jackson, MS |
| 8 San Francisco, CA | 148 Fayetteville, NC |
| 9 Colorado Springs, CO | 149 Columbus, GA |
| 10 Boston, MA | 150 Detroit, MI |
Comparing the Best & Worst
- Knoxville, Tenn., has the highest number of sales per agent, 120, which is 20 times more than in Houston, the city with the lowest, 6.
- San Francisco has the highest median home price, $765,700, which is 17 times greater than in Detroit, the city with the lowest, $45,100.
- Indianapolis has the highest annual median wage for real-estate agents, $105,370, which is four times greater than in Wichita, Kan., the city with the lowest, $24,320.
- Orlando, Fla., has the highest real-estate job density, 32.61, which is 24 times greater than in Detroit, the city with the lowest, 1.35.
- Fresno, Calif., has the highest unemployment rate, 10.7%, which is five times greater than in Lincoln, Neb., the city with the lowest, 2.0%.
- Henderson, Nev., has the highest home turnover rate, 9.80%, which is four times greater than in Yonkers, N.Y., the city with the lowest, 2.58%.
- Properties in Newark, N.J., have the highest number of days on the market, 225, which is five times longer than in San Francisco, the city with the lowest, 43.
- Yonkers, N.Y., has the highest average ratio of home sale price to home list price, 1.97, which is three times greater than in Scottsdale, Ariz., the city with the lowest, 0.66.