The Agent Migration Problem: Why Your Top Producer Might Already Be Leaving
Author: Kent Lardner Date: February 2026 Category: Commission Intelligence
Real estate recruitment conversations focus almost entirely on who to hire. Rarely do they quantify what happens when someone leaves.
The assumption in most offices is that losing an agent is a setback but not a structural problem — the remaining team absorbs the listings, a replacement gets recruited, and the office recovers within a quarter or two. That assumption holds when the departing agent is an average performer. It falls apart completely when the person walking out the door is the top producer.
Across Australia's 88 SA4 regions, commission data from the November 2025 to January 2026 quarter reveals just how concentrated earning power is within individual markets — and how exposed offices and regions become when a single high performer moves.
The replacement cost of a top producer
The conventional way to think about agent departures is in terms of the individual's earnings. If an agent generating $500,000 in quarterly commissions leaves, the office loses $500,000. That framing is correct but incomplete. The more useful question is: how many average agents would you need to hire to replace that output?
In Sydney's South West, the top-ranked agent generated an estimated $3.23 million in quarterly commissions. The average agent in that SA4 generated $66,122. Replacing the top producer's output would require recruiting 48.8 average agents — a number that is functionally impossible in a single quarter.
That is an extreme case, but the pattern repeats at scale. In Sydney's Inner West, the top producer generated 19.2 times the average agent's earnings. In Melbourne South East, the multiple is 18.5. In Baulkham Hills and Hawkesbury, 18.3. In the Eastern Suburbs, 17.1.
Across Australia's major metro markets, top producers routinely generate between 10 and 20 times the output of the average agent in their region. Losing one of these individuals is not equivalent to losing one headcount. It is equivalent to losing an entire team — and in some markets, a significant fraction of the office's total billing.
Which markets are most vulnerable
Market vulnerability is a function of how much of the total commission pool the top agent controls. Where one individual captures a large share, the market is structurally dependent on their continued presence.
The most concentrated major market in Australia is Sydney's South West, where the top agent accounts for 9.3% of the entire SA4's estimated commission pool. That is $3.23 million out of $34.6 million — nearly one dollar in every ten flowing through a region of 523 tracked agents.
Sydney's Eastern Suburbs ranks second at 6.3%, followed by the Inner West at 5.1%, Illawarra at 4.9%, and Baulkham Hills and Hawkesbury at 4.5%. In regional markets, concentration tends to be even higher: Warrnambool and South West in Victoria sits at 5.1%, Launceston at 5.0%, and Toowoomba at 4.9%.
For the principal or group leader managing an office in these regions, the departure of a single agent could visibly shift the office's market share metrics. For competing groups, these same markets represent the highest-leverage recruitment targets — landing one person can meaningfully change the competitive landscape.
Which markets are most resilient
At the other end of the spectrum, some markets are structured so that no single agent's departure would cause material disruption.
The Gold Coast is the most resilient major market in Australia. Despite being the nation's largest commission pool at $81.0 million, the top individual agent captures just 0.8% of the total. Melbourne Inner sits at 0.9%. The Sunshine Coast and Melbourne North East are both at 1.1%.
These are markets where commission earnings are broadly distributed across a deep agent base. Losing the top producer would be noticed, but the remaining 1,000-plus agents (in the Gold Coast's case) would continue to service the market with minimal aggregate disruption.
The structural difference between a 0.8% concentration market and a 9.3% concentration market is not incremental — it is categorical. They require fundamentally different retention strategies, different succession planning, and different competitive responses when agents signal an intention to move.
What the dollar impact actually looks like
When the top agent leaves a high-concentration market, the remaining pool shrinks — but the per-agent average barely moves. That is because the top producer's output is so far above the field that removing it has almost no effect on the average of the remaining 99%.
In Sydney's South West, removing the top agent's $3.23 million drops the average from $66,122 to $60,066 per agent. The pool loses $3.23 million, but the median agent's world is unchanged. The damage is concentrated in the office that held that agent — not distributed across the region.
This asymmetry is the core of the migration problem. The region absorbs the departure easily. The office that loses the agent does not. And the office that gains them — often a competitor across the same SA4 — receives a disproportionate uplift.
In practical terms: if a competitor recruits your top producer in the Eastern Suburbs, they gain an estimated $1.82 million in quarterly commissions. You lose $1.82 million. The net competitive swing is $3.64 million — more than the total quarterly output of many smaller SA4 regions nationally.
The signals that precede migration
Commission data does not predict when an agent will leave. But it does reveal the conditions under which migration becomes more likely.
Earnings compression matters. When a top producer generates 15 to 20 times the average in their market, they know it — even if the principal doesn't have the exact numbers. These agents are acutely aware of their own value relative to their peers, and they attract inbound recruitment interest constantly. The question is not whether someone is calling them. The question is whether the current office is giving them a reason to stay.
Market oversupply creates pressure. In SA4 regions where listings per agent drop below 2.5, competition for mandates is intense. Top producers who consistently win in these conditions are the most valuable — and the most courted. Sydney's Inner West (2.1 listings per agent), City and Inner South (2.2), and Ryde (2.3) are markets where the best agents operate under constant competitive pressure and constant recruitment approaches.
Adjacent market pricing creates pull. An agent producing well in a mid-market SA4 may look at the commission-per-listing figures in a neighbouring premium SA4 and see a rational case for moving. The Inner West agent generating $28,396 per listing can see that Eastern Suburbs agents generate $38,398 per listing for comparable effort. The geographic distance is small. The commission uplift is 35%.
What this means for retention and recruitment
The commission data reframes the retention conversation. Most offices approach retention as a relationship exercise — culture, recognition, profit-share arrangements, personal rapport with the principal. These factors matter. But they matter in the context of an economic reality that most principals cannot see without structured data.
If your top producer generates 15 times the average agent's output, your retention strategy for that individual should be qualitatively different from your retention strategy for the rest of the team. And if you don't know who that individual is — or how their output compares to the field — you are managing retention blind.
On the recruitment side, concentration data provides a targeting filter. High-concentration markets identify where a single hire can transform an office's competitive position. Low-concentration markets identify where team-building matters more than individual recruitment.
Neither approach is inherently superior. But applying the wrong strategy to the wrong market structure is how recruitment budgets produce disappointing returns.
The visibility problem
The deepest challenge in agent migration is not strategy — it is visibility. Most principals know who their top performer is within their own office. Very few know how that person compares to every other agent in their SA4, or how their output ranks at the SA2 level, or whether a competitor's new hire is the kind of producer who shifts the local market dynamics.
Commission intelligence provides that visibility. Not as a surveillance tool, but as a structural lens — the ability to see which agents are producing at what level, which markets are concentrated or distributed, and where competitive movement is most likely to have an outsized impact.
This analysis is based on commission estimates derived from active listing data for the November 2025 to January 2026 quarter. Commissions are modelled using a tiered percentage structure applied to listing prices, with median-by-bedroom imputation where prices were withheld. Agent and agency attribution is based on listing-level data. Data is refreshed weekly.
See agent concentration across all 88 SA4 regions at suburbtrends.com. For full agent rankings and SA2-level intelligence — Talk to Kent →