Picture the closing of a lower-priced starter home. The young couple is beaming (and probably taking selfies) as they sign the docs. How old do you picture their agent? Do younger agents gravitate to lower-priced properties early in their career or are agent ages and property values independent?

An examination of nearly 90,000 Wisconsin listings tells the story. Agents in their 20’s tend disproportionately toward lower priced properties. The average close price for agents of each age between 20 and 79 is plotted below with the blue line representing the overall average close price.3
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A few takeaways:

Very young agents are associated with lower priced properties.

By the time an agent reaches 30 this lower-priced property effect is gone.

It starts up again at the end of an agent’s career after age 70.

Mid-career agents tend to average somewhat higher value properties

What causes this effect? It could be driven by the difficulty for newer (or older) agents to list high-end, and highly sought after, listings which has the result of driving the average down. There are other reasonable explanations, of course. What’s yours?