When Agents Switch Brokerages: The Windows Most Team Leaders Miss

Most team leaders recruit when their own calendar opens up.

The agent moves when HER window opens. Those are rarely the same week.

That is the part most people miss about when agents switch brokerages. It is not random. It also has very little to do with how good your pitch was. It follows a pattern. A time of year. A change in her office. A change in her last twelve months.

I know this from the agent's chair. Years ago the independent brokerage I helped build moved to eXp, and I fought it. "I was a 225-pound anchor that didn't want to go to eXp." I was looking at going from a 98/2 split to 80/20. No recruiter was going to move me that month with a better offer. My brokerage moved, and that changed the question.

I am Blake Suddath, a real estate recruiter and recruiting coach and the co-founder of Inner Cirql Recruiting Systems with Tyler Lewis. This post covers what the data says about timing, the four windows I watch for, the one signal most leaders read wrong and what to do this month.

When Agents Switch Brokerages, According to the Data

The freshest numbers come from the Agent Migration and Brokerage Model Performance Report for Q3 2026, published by Recruiting Insight with Lone Wolf Technologies. Inman covered it on October 20, 2026. Real Estate News covered it on October 31.

Both reported the same headline. About 1 in 8 producing agents change firms each year. Inman did the math for you. A brokerage with 100 agents should plan to replace roughly 12 of them annually.

One caution before you repeat that at a meeting. Inman notes the report looks at four large MLSs, not the whole country. Treat it as a strong sample, not a census.

Now the timing. Inman's write-up says moves typically peak in January. Real Estate News describes the post-holiday winter season as the time when agent migration tends to pick up. HousingWire's February 2026 coverage of the same firm's 2025 report also listed January as a peak month.

Here is my read, and it is mine, not a line from the report. If the moves land in January, the thinking happened in November and December. Nobody wakes up on January 2 and changes brokerages. She has been turning it over for weeks.

Which means the window you care about is open right now.

The Four Windows When Agents Switch Brokerages

The turn of the year. An agent closes her books. She sees what she kept, what she paid in splits and fees and what she got for it. Then she writes next year's plan. That is the one time of year she looks at her brokerage the way an owner looks at a vendor. The January peak in the data is that review showing up a few weeks later.

After someone else leaves. According to the same report, covered by both Inman and Real Estate News, agents in an office that had just lost 20% or more of its roster to competitors were 1.9 times as likely to follow. That fits everything I have seen. "Human beings leave other human beings. To be led. By other human beings." When the people she sat next to are gone, a lot of her reason to stay went with them.

The year after a move. Agents who changed firms in the past year were 1.7 times as likely to move again. Think about what that means. She already did the hard part once. If the new place is not what she was told it would be, leaving a second time is easier. I wrote about what goes wrong in that first year in why experienced agents leave teams in year one.

When the leadership changes direction. The report's exit interviews named eight drivers of departures. Compensation came first. The rest were things like the direction of leadership, training and coaching, support, technology and culture. A new manager. A merger. A fee change announced by email. Those are the moments an agent who was not looking starts looking.

The Signal Most Leaders Read Wrong

Most recruiters watch production. An agent has a soft year, and the calls start coming in.

The data says that is the wrong list. Agents whose production dropped by 25% or more were no more likely to switch than anyone else. Inman and Real Estate News both reported that finding. The report's own line, quoted by Inman, is that the real warning signs are "around the agent, not in their numbers."

I agree with that, and it changes how you work. Use production data to decide WHO is worth a conversation. That is what recruiting off MLS production data is for. Do not use it to guess WHEN. A slow year does not open the window. A change around her does.

So the better question on a call is not "how is business?" It is "what has changed for you this year?"

You Cannot Schedule Her Window. You Can Be There When It Opens.

You will not know the day her manager quits. You will not know the week three agents leave her office.

What you control is whether she already knows you when it happens.

In 2025, half of the agents we hired signed within 8 days of their first appointment. I do not read that as a closing skill. I read it as timing. When an agent is ready, she is ready, and things move fast. If she is meeting you for the first time that week, you are competing with every other leader who called. Why pace matters once she raises her hand is in why speed wins in agent recruiting.

So the work between windows is staying known without pitching. The most success I had was a Tuesday at 11am meeting. I would invite people to "just come sit in the back, I'll save you a seat in the back, be a fly on the wall." No decision. No slide deck. She sees the room, and she remembers it later.

Then stay in touch like a person. "I think the best recruiter is the best communicator." Ask what she wants next year. Write it down. Check in when you have something new to say. When her broker comes up, let her talk and leave it alone, which I covered in how to recruit without trashing their broker.

And expect to be one of several voices. Producing agents hear from a lot of teams, which is the subject of how often agents get recruited. The leader who was there before the window opened is not one of the crowd.

Your Own Roster Has the Same Windows

Everything above is also a list of when YOUR agents are open.

Your agents close their books in December too. They get the same calls in the same weeks. If an agent leaves your team this month, the people who sat near her are now the ones to watch.

So do the simple things early. Have the next-year conversation with every producing agent before the holidays, not after. What do you want next year? What is in the way? What should I be doing that I am not?

When someone does leave, meet with the rest of the team that week. Not next quarter. And give your newest hires extra attention, because the first year after a move is when a second move is most likely. The first month matters most, and it is laid out in onboarding experienced agents. For your biggest producer, read how to keep your top producer from leaving.

Where AI and Your CRM Fit

A window you did not write down is a window you will miss.

Add three fields to every agent in your recruiting CRM. The date of your last real conversation. What she said she wanted. What has changed around her, such as a recent move, a new manager or people leaving her office.

Then set two reminders. One for early November, every year, for every agent on the list. One for the week you hear about a change at her brokerage. AI can draft the check-in from your notes in seconds and flag who has gone quiet. It cannot make the call or save her a seat in the back. Track the conversations in your weekly recruiting KPIs.

The weekly rhythm behind this is the Territory Takeover System. The agent's side of the same decision is on TheInnerCirql.com in signs to leave a real estate team. The neutral, data version of this post is the reference page When Are Real Estate Agents Most Likely to Switch Brokerages? For how long a move takes once it starts, see How Long Does It Take to Recruit a Real Estate Agent? For the overview, start on the recruiting page.

The Bottom Line

Agents do not switch because you called. They switch when something changes, and you happened to be the one they already knew.

The year turns. Someone leaves. A recent move disappoints. Leadership changes direction. Those are the windows. A bad sales year is not one of them.

If you want help building a recruiting rhythm that is already in place when those windows open in your market, start with one call. Schedule Your Call.

FAQ

Agents switch brokerages most often at the start of the year. Inman's October 2026 coverage of the Recruiting Insight and Lone Wolf Technologies Q3 2026 report says moves typically peak in January, and Real Estate News describes the post-holiday winter season as when agent migration tends to pick up. The report covers four large MLSs, not the whole country. In my experience the decision forms in the weeks before, which makes November and December the months to be in touch.

About 1 in 8 producing agents change firms each year, according to the Recruiting Insight and Lone Wolf Technologies Q3 2026 report as covered by Inman and Real Estate News. Inman put it in practical terms: a brokerage with 100 agents should plan to replace roughly 12 a year. That figure describes the four MLS markets in the study. Other studies count agents differently, so expect other numbers elsewhere.

No. Agents whose production dropped by 25% or more were no more likely to switch brokerages than anyone else, according to the same report as covered by Inman and Real Estate News. A slow year is a poor way to build a call list. The stronger signals are changes around the agent, such as departures from her office or a recent move of her own.

The strongest signals are changes around the agent, not changes in her sales. In the Recruiting Insight report, agents in an office that had just lost 20% or more of its roster to competitors were 1.9 times as likely to follow, and agents who had changed firms in the past year were 1.7 times as likely to move again. Exit interviews in the report also named leadership direction, training, support and culture alongside compensation. Ask what has changed for her this year.

Start well before January, because the agents who move in January were thinking about it during the fall. Inman reports that moves typically peak in January, so a first call in January reaches an agent who may have already decided. A relationship that started months earlier is the one she calls. The approach in this post is a fixed weekly time for recruiting conversations all year, with a check-in on every agent on the list in early November.

Have the next-year conversation with every producing agent before the holidays. Ask what she wants next year, what is in the way and what you should be doing differently. If someone leaves your team, meet with the rest that week, because the Recruiting Insight report found agents were 1.9 times as likely to follow after an office lost 20% or more of its roster. Give recent hires extra attention during their first year.