A lot of agent bios lead with a lifetime number, five hundred homes sold, which sounds impressive but tells you almost nothing about right now. Markets shift fast, and an agent who did great work five years ago might have slowed down, changed focus, or simply stopped keeping pace with how the current market actually behaves. Ask instead, what have you closed in the last twelve months. That's the number that reflects how this agent is operating in today's conditions, not conditions from years ago.
I keep my own recent numbers easy to find because I think that's fair to ask of anyone. Kinetic Real Estate, the brokerage I'm part of, has closed over 1,200 properties and holds more than 500 five star reviews across the Peninsula, San Francisco, greater Bay Area, and Sacramento. But what matters for your specific sale is what's happened on your specific street lately, not the brokerage's lifetime total.
Why Local Beats Volume
An agent who's closed forty homes across five different counties isn't necessarily sharper than one who's closed twelve in your neighborhood alone. Ask where those recent sales actually happened. Pricing a home in Pacifica takes different instincts than pricing one in San Mateo. The comps differ, the buyer pool differs, and even the inspection issues that tend to come up differ block by block, depending on the age and construction style of the homes nearby.
How to Actually Verify What You're Told
Don't just take the number at face value. Ask for the addresses, most are public record anyway, or ask to speak with a client from one of those recent closings. A confident agent will hand this over without flinching. If you get resistance, or the story keeps changing between conversations, that's worth paying attention to before you commit to working together.
I'll usually just pull up my last few closings on my phone in the first conversation. It's faster than describing them, and you can see the real numbers instead of taking my word for it. If a homeowner or buyer ever wants to call one of my past clients directly, I'll connect them without hesitation.
What to Do With the Information Once You Have It
Compare what you learn across two or three agents rather than stopping your search after the first good conversation. You're not just looking for someone who sounds confident, you're looking for someone whose recent, local track record actually backs up what they're telling you. That comparison is where the real decision gets made.
What a Strong Answer Actually Sounds Like
A strong answer to this question sounds specific and a little unglamorous. Something like, I closed four homes in South San Francisco this year, here are the addresses, here's what they sold for versus list price, and here's a client you're welcome to call. That level of detail is easy to give when it's true, and hard to fake when it isn't.
Why I Bring This Up Before a Client Even Asks
I'd rather volunteer my recent numbers than wait to be asked, because waiting sends the wrong signal. It suggests the information is something to be pried out rather than something I'm proud to stand behind. Any agent who treats their own track record as a closely guarded secret is telling you something, even if they never say it directly.
How This Fits Into the Rest of Your Interview Process
Sales history is one piece of a bigger picture, alongside communication style, local knowledge, and simple personal fit. Weigh it alongside everything else you learn rather than letting a single strong number override every other consideration. The agent with the best recent numbers isn't automatically the right one for you if the rest of the relationship doesn't feel right too.
One More Thing Worth Checking
It's also fair to ask how many of those recent closings were on the buy side versus the sell side, since some agents lean heavily toward one or the other. If your situation is specifically a sale, a track record built mostly on buyer transactions matters less than one built on recent listings, and vice versa. This distinction is easy to overlook but genuinely changes how relevant a given number actually is to your own situation.
Have a specific situation you're weighing? Happy to just talk it through with you. Reach out anytime.