Written by David Dodge  

(Even When Rates Drop Below 6%) – And How to Make Sure You’re Not One of Them

The latest December 2025 forecasts from Fannie Mae, the Mortgage Bankers Association, NAR, and every major economist agree on one thing: 2026 will be the best market we’ve seen since 2021. Thirty-year fixed rates averaging 5.8–6.2%, existing-home sales climbing to 4.4–4.7 million (a 10–14% increase), inventory moving toward a balanced 4.8–5.2 months of supply, and median price growth settling into a sustainable 3–4%. For the first time in years, buyers and sellers will both feel like they can move again.

And yet the 2025 NAR Member Profile (released October 2025) shows the median agent closed exactly ten transactions and earned $58,100 gross. That number has been essentially flat for three straight years. More volume and lower rates will not fix the majority. They will only widen the canyon between the top 10% and everyone else.

After coaching agents to seven figures in every market since 2012 and auditing thousands of businesses in 2024–2025, six gaps show up every single time. Close them now, and 2026 becomes the year you finally break through. Ignore them, and you’ll be telling the same story next December.

1. Your Database Is Still Too Small or Too Dead

The average agent ends 2025 with fewer than 400 active, segmented contacts they actually stay in touch with, based on the 2025 Follow Up Boss & kvCORE State of CRM Report. Many records haven’t been updated since the 2020 refi boom. The agents dominating their markets finish the year with 2,000–5,000 contacts that are cleaned quarterly, tagged by source and projected move timeline, and receive consistent value every 30–45 days.

When rates drop, and the lock-in effect finally breaks, the first wave of listings will come from past clients and sphere who have been waiting for a payment under $2,500 again. If you are not the agent they’ve heard from regularly, you will not be the agent they call.

2. Your Follow-Up Still Dies After the First “Not Yet.”

Forty-eight percent of all leads never get a second contact, and eighty percent of sales require five or more touches—those numbers haven’t budged in ten years. Buyer inquiries will surge again in 2026 the moment rates stay under 6% for two straight months. Most agents will treat those leads exactly the way they did in 2021–2023: one or two weak texts and then nothing. The agents who win will have a real twelve-to-fifteen-touch sequence that blends automation and deliberate human follow-up, turning “just looking” leads today into closings six to eighteen months from now.

3. No One Knows Who You Are Before They Need You

Today, 91% of buyers still use an agent, but more than half only interview one—the one they already feel they know from video content, reviews, or referrals. If your online presence is a dusty Facebook page, a brokerage headshot from 2018, and random posts every couple of weeks, you have already lost the trust battle. The agents pulling listings and buyer clients straight from YouTube, Instagram Reels, and TikTok market updates aren’t trying to be influencers; they have simply become the person everyone in their farm watches every week.

4. You Still Work Like an Employee Instead of an Owner

The typical full-time agent logs 50–60 hours a week on low-value tasks, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The top 10% average 25–30 leveraged hours and produce three to five times the income. The difference is protecting the first half of the day for only three dollar-productive activities: lead generation, lead conversion, and appointment execution. Everything else is batched, delegated, or eliminated. Agents who locked this in during January 2025 routinely added 20–40 closings without adding hours.

5. You’re Still Trying to Be All Things to All People

The NAR settlement and the new buyer-agency rules have trained consumers to shop agents the way they shop contractors. When every profile says the same generic thing, price becomes the deciding factor. In 2026, the fastest way to higher commissions and shorter days-on-market is deep specialization—probate and trust sales, divorce listings, corporate relocation, luxury leasing for investors, ADU conversions, or first-time-buyer grant expertise. Specialists aren’t a luxury anymore; they are the only agents who feel inevitable to the exact client who has that exact need.

6. You’re Still Waiting for the Market to Save You

Most agents operate with an employee mindset: waiting for rates, waiting for inventory, waiting for leads to call them. The agents who own their markets treat real estate like the entrepreneurial business it actually is. They generate their own listings with targeted seller campaigns nine to twelve months ahead of the move cycle. They host client events that produce referrals on schedule. They lock in exclusive lender and professional partnerships that deliver pre-approved buyers every month. When the market finally improves, they aren’t hoping for business—they’re turning it away.

What Actually Happened in 2025 When Agents Closed These Gaps

A Dallas-area agent who had eleven closings in 2024 rebuilt his database to twenty-six hundred contacts, chose probate as his specialty, and started weekly YouTube market updates. He finished 2025 with fifty-two closings and just over one million dollars in GCI.

A part-time Tampa agent who was burned out on seven deals adopted the three-activity daily schedule, niched into luxury leasing for institutional investors, and joined daily accountability. She closed one hundred transactions—mostly leases at twelve to eighteen thousand commission each—and crossed $1.37 million GCI.

A Sacramento broker with zero video presence is committed to one market update video every Thursday starting January 1st. Forty-one of his listings last year came directly from people who found him on YouTube.

A Chicago suburban agent combined the divorce niche with a fifteen-touch past-client campaign and picked up thirty-four extra closings she never would have counted on.

These are ordinary agents who decided to stop waiting and start building while everyone else complained about the market.

The Real 2026 Math

At 4.65 million existing-home sales and ~1.56 million active NAR members, the average agent would handle only three sides if volume were split evenly. It never is. The top 10% will take 30–50+ sides each. The bottom 70% will fight over the rest, and ~20% of all licensees will still close zero transactions — exactly like every year.

More sales don't fix broken businesses. They concentrate the money in fewer hands.

The 90-Day Window That Will Decide Your Entire Year

December 2025 through February 2026 is the last quiet season we'll see for years. Use it to export and clean every contact you've ever had, launch a monthly value newsletter plus one mailed touch per quarter, pick one niche and create your first five pieces of niche content, install a real 12–15-touch follow-up sequence, block your calendar for three dollar-productive activities before noon every day, and start posting one short video a week.

Everything you need is already built and completely free: the 2026 database reactivation campaign, the exact daily schedule my seven-figure clients use, niche workbook, the rate-drop listing presentation closing 78% of appointments right now, and live training every day in December.

Join the Real Estate Skool community and download it all instantly → https://www.skool.com/real-estate-skool/about

If you want daily accountability and a small group starting January 6th, the application for the 2026 mastermind (only 12 spots) is inside. They sell out before Christmas every year.

The market is finally giving us the best setup in half a decade. Whether 2026 becomes the year everything changed for you — or the year you say “next year will be different” — gets decided in the next 90 days.