Hawaii’s Top 100 Realtors 2012

How We Create the List

Welcome to Hawaii Business magazine’s Top 100 Realtors for 2012. This is the only objective ranking of Realtors in the state. The information was compiled using the Multiple Listing Service databases from the Honolulu Board of Realtors, the Realtors Association of Maui and Hawaii Information Service, which manages the MLS data for Hawaii Island and Kauai.

Each January, PKF Pacific Hawaii LLP, a tax, audit and advisory firm, compiles the data and ranks each Realtor by total sales volume in the home resale market for single-family homes and condominiums. Realtors under consideration are then contacted, and their totals are verified. Realtors may dispute any discrepancies.

The criteria we use:

• Only MLS transactions in Hawaii are counted.
• Only residential sales are counted; land-only and multifamily sales are not. A separate list can be found later in this article.
• New property sales are not included.
• No original or new-development sales are counted.
• Project brokers whose company has an exclusive contract for sales in a gated community are not included. A separate list can be found later in this article.
• Primary listors receive full credit for the transaction; co-listors do not receive credit.
• Each side in a transaction – both the seller’s agent and the buyer’s agent – are credited with the full selling price of a home.
• If a Realtor represents both buyer and seller, that agent is credited with twice the selling price. In such cases, the Realtor would also get credited for two transactions.

Top 25 Realtors

* Top 100 Realtor every year since 2007.

Alphabetical List of Other Top 100

* Top 100 Realtor every year since 2007.

Hawaii’s Top Real Estate Companies

We gauged the size of Hawaii’s residential real estate companies in two ways. First, we ranked the top 10 companies by the number of transactions in 2011, which included each side of a sale represented by one of the company’s agents. The other measure was sales volume, or the dollar value of all those sides.

As with our Top 100 Realtor calculations, these data excluded land sales, new developments and some other transactions. In addition, all our data came from MLS, which creates occasional distortions. For example, if an agent moves in mid-year from one company to another, all the agent’s transactions for the year are listed under the new company. Also, some wealthy buyers prefer not to have their homes included in MLS, which means those transactions were not included in our figures.

The distribution of expensive real estate accounts for much of the difference in our two lists. Some companies, such as Windermere/C and H Properties, Prudential Orchid Isle Properties and Keller Williams, sold a lot of homes, but, because much of that real estate was relatively inexpensive, these companies didn’t make our sales-volume list. Similarly, companies such as Island Sotheby’s International Realty, The Wailea Group and East Oahu Realty didn’t sell enough homes to make our transactions list, but the high prices of those homes pumped up their sales volume. This is easier to understand when you consider the extremes: The average transaction for Prudential Orchid Isle Properties was worth $212,825. At Island Sotheby’s International Realty, the figure was more like $1.9 million.

2011 Sales Volume

2011 Transactions / Sides

Top Agents for Vacant Land Sales

This year, Hawaii Business ranks the state’s top 10 Realtors by vacant land sales, using criteria similar to our Top 100 Realtors. We only counted sales that are identified as residential vacant land sales in the MLS database. We also contacted each Realtor to confirm his or her total.

We understand that many of the vacant lots on the Neighbor Islands are zoned for agriculture, but we did not include lots zoned for agriculture.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please email feedback@hawaiibusiness.com.

Exclusive Contracts List

Agents whose companies have exclusive contracts for sales in gated communities