According to Scottsdale.org, Arizona’s real‑estate brokerage landscape is heavily skewed toward a few large firms. The state had 5,784 active brokerage entities and 59,847 active agents as of Oct. 5, based on Arizona Department of Real Estate records analyzed by Cromford Report consultant Dane Bergs.

More than half of the brokerages—50.6%—operate with a single agent, and another 24.9% have two or three agents. Collectively, these small operations represent 75.5% of all brokerages but only 10.5% of the state’s agents.

At the opposite extreme, nine brokerages each employ more than 1,000 agents. Though they comprise just 0.2% of all brokerages, they account for 35.6% of Arizona’s active agents. Brokerages with 101 to 1,000 agents hold another 25.3% of agents while representing only 1% of brokerage entities. The remaining 28.7% of agents work at firms with four to 100 agents.

Bergs noted that this concentration is especially relevant as the industry debates the future of private property‑listing networks—platforms that allow brokerages to market homes outside the traditional Multiple Listing Service. While he did not take a position on the merits of private networks, he warned that the nine largest firms could wield considerable influence if such networks expand. “They’re able to pull a lot of weight, and that could be a challenge for the other 65% of agents if we saw the private listing network market continue to grow,” he said.

The analysis does not indicate that the large firms plan to create private listing networks, nor does it prove that smaller brokerages would necessarily lose business. However, the disparity highlights how a handful of companies can dominate a market populated by thousands of independent operations.

As Arizona’s housing market adapts to fewer transactions, stakeholders may need to consider how this imbalance could affect the accessibility of listings and competition among agents.

Sources: scottsdale.org