Home for sale.Al Behrman/The Associated Press
Canada's largest real estate brokerage in 2010 was Sutton Group West Coast Realty with $8.4-billion in transactions, data tracker Real Trends said Tuesday in its second-annual national rankings of the country's real estate industry.
Sutton Group West Coast Realty, based in New Westminster, B.C., led the country in terms of both transactions and dollar volume. Its 1,690 agents closed 14,577 deals in 2010, for $8.4-billion in deals.
The rankings were put together by Colorado-based Real Trends, which has been compiling similar data in the United States for the past 20 years. The first Canadian survey was issued last year.
The study is not without its problems - the information is gathered via a survey, which means many of the company's brokerages are not represented. The brokerages also provide their own data, which leaves the survey open to questions about accuracy.
It's also not the sort of information that the companies are used to providing, but Real Trends hopes that each year the list becomes more robust as more brokerages sign up. The company hopes to sell subscriptions to the brokerages, which would provide more information than is provided in the annual survey.
Nicolai Kolding of Realtrends answered questions about the survey Tuesday morning.
How do you compile the data?
The information is voluntarily submitted, we try to reach as many as we possibly can. They send us sale volume and transactions and we verify by checking tax returns or checking with the franchisor who then verifies the accuracy. We cross examine it in as many ways as we can to make sure it all makes sense. I mean, they understand the penalties if they give false answers.
Wait, what are the penalties?
Well, simply that they wouldn't be included ever again. That's really all we can do.
What counts as a sale?
In Canada, unlike the U.S. people are used to a single count method. But we do it that you count both sides - if there is a $200,000 house sold between two agents, each gets to claim $200,000. But if one broker handles both sides, then they claim $400,000. Some say they can't stand that methodology, but it's what we've used in the U.S. and we're trying to build comparables.
How was participation this year compared to last? What percentage of the country's transactions did you capture?
It was higher this year, with 229 firms in total this year. Dead on 200 last year. I'm not sure how many we actually reached out to - but we caught about 50 per cent of all of the country's transactions.
Any main differences between Canada and the U.S. in the initial data?
One interesting finding is that the productivity per person in Canada is considerably higher than in the U.S. The average agent in Canada does 14 transactions a year, in the U.S. it's closer to 8. I think we may have something to learn up there, but because this is only our second year we can't draw many conclusions as to why that is - that's something we'll be able to determine as the years go by.
Top five brokerages by dollar volume:
Sutton Group West Coast Realty, $8.4-billion
Royal LePage Real Estate Services $6.3-billion
Remax Realtron Realty $3.3-billion
Macdonald Realty Group $3.1- billion
Remax Hallmark Realty Brokerage $3.1-billion