EXPOSED
The desk half of this job — listing copy, comparative market analyses, MLS data entry, lead follow-up, disclosure packet assembly, transaction coordination — is already largely automatable and portals like Zillow and Redfin have been eating the search-and-match function for a decade. What holds is the licensed, physically present, relationship-carrying half: touring properties, reading a seller's motivation, pricing a weird house, and negotiating a six-figure decision the client makes once a decade. The real threat isn't AI replacing agents outright but commission compression post-NAR settlement squeezing out the large part-time tier while full-time relationship agents keep the volume.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
Median pay $48,930 → $52,830 -13.6% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+3.1%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 193,370 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +3.1% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 59/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~36,600 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
RealtorLand AgentSales AgentBuyers AgentClosing AgentLeasing AgentShowing AgentLand Sales AgentSales ConsultantSales SpecialistLeasing AssociateReal Estate AgentRealtor AssociateLeasing ConsultantLeasing SpecialistReal Estate CloserRental Sales AgentRight-of-Way AgentRight-of-Way BuyerSales ProfessionalBuilding ConsultantClosing CoordinatorContract SpecialistLeasing Professional
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: task resistance .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier A 10 reflects the split day: CMAs, MLS entry, listing descriptions, showing scheduling and drip campaigns to cold leads are already software output, while walking a 1920s bungalow to see the foundation crack, staging advice, and open-house conversion still require a body and a read of the room — neither half dominates, which is why this sits at the midpoint rather than at 6 with pure data roles or 14 with trade work.
Some physical or field component A 12 is earned by real driving hours — lockbox access, previews, inspection walk-throughs, sign installation, and buyer tours across a metro in weather you don't control — but the environments are finished houses and title offices, not roofs or crawlspaces under load, so it lands below the 13+ band where physical hazard and site unpredictability are the job itself.
Licensed human required and personally liable State licensure, brokerage supervision, E&O coverage and personal exposure on material-defect disclosure and fair-housing violations put you well above certification-preferred work, but the score stops at 12 because the broker of record holds the license liability, the attorney or title company closes, and a 60-hour pre-license course plus exam is a barrier a motivated adult clears in weeks — unlike a bar admission or an appraisal certification with USPAP.
Meaningful discretion An 11 fits pricing a property with no comparable sales, advising whether to counter or hold, and calling a contingency risk — real discretion with six figures on the line — but the client signs every decision, the contracts are state-promulgated forms, and the fiduciary duty is advisory rather than the final call, which keeps it out of the 14+ band.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (10/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (12/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (14/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (11/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 37 of this occupation's 59 points (63%).
Embodiment (12/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
No occupation passed every test: close enough to real estate sales agents on skills and subject matter, at least 10 points more resistant, no big jump in training, no new licence, no pay cut, and not shrinking on its own. That happens for 223 of the 654 occupations here that aren't SAFE, and it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving the section off.
The usual reason is that exposure travels with the skill profile. The jobs most similar to yours tend to be exposed for the same reasons yours is, so the near neighbours don't clear the gap — and the ones that do are a different kind of work, not a transfer of what you already know. Read that as a limit of this method, not a verdict that you're stuck: it only compares whole occupations, and it cannot see specialisation, industry, or anything you'd bring that isn't in a federal skill survey.
Here is that claim on your own job rather than in the abstract. These are the three occupations closest to this one by skill and subject matter — the places the work would most naturally transfer — with what the register scores them:
That is the whole problem in three lines. The nearest work is not meaningfully safer, so there is no move here that trades a similar skill set for a better verdict. This is not us running out of ideas — it is what the neighbourhood looks like.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 70/100 — SAFE.
Mandatory written buyer-representation agreements under the NAR settlement (effective Aug 2024) plus state statutes codifying them (e.g., existing NY, TX, and new post-settlement bills) put a named licensee's signature and fiduciary duty on every buyer-side engagement. If state boards go further and rule that AI-generated pricing opinions or disclosure packets constitute the unlicensed practice of real estate or appraisal unless a licensee reviews and signs (parallel to state appraisal boards' scrutiny of AVMs, and the 2024 interagency AVM quality-control rule), the sign-off becomes non-delegable.
Task-mix shift as the routine tier goes: if CMAs, listing copy, MLS entry, transaction coordination, and lead nurture are fully absorbed by brokerage software, what remains billable is pricing atypical property, seller-motivation reading, and multi-offer negotiation — genuinely two-tiered work. Watch for the part-time tier exiting (NAR membership decline post-settlement) while remaining agents' day is majority negotiation and in-person judgment.
Fair-housing and steering liability attaching personally to the licensee for outputs of AI tools they deploy — HUD/DOJ guidance treating discriminatory algorithmic lead routing or neighborhood-description language as the agent's own violation, following the Meta ad-targeting consent decree. Also disclosure-failure suits (undisclosed defects, flood/wildfire history) where the licensee cannot shift blame to a vendor's data feed.
Narrow route only: in luxury, off-market, and probate/divorce/estate segments buyers and sellers pay for a named human with discretion and network access, and commission compression does not reach it. No plausible route to a higher trust premium in the median-priced resale transaction — the NAR settlement is explicitly designed to make that fee negotiable downward, and flat-fee and portal-employed models are pulling the other way.
The limit. Liability shield here is thin by design: the license protects the transaction, not the headcount. Brokerages can concentrate signatures on far fewer licensees while software does volume, so a rising liability_shield score can coexist with a shrinking occupation. Commission compression, not model capability, is the binding constraint.
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 9,160 | $47,080 -11% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 8,320 | $103,550 +96% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 7,340 | $47,020 -11% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 6,960 | $46,730 -12% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 6,950 | $44,580 -16% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 5,320 | $49,250 -7% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 5,100 | $61,790 +17% |
| Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL | 4,470 | $62,630 +19% |
| Midland, TX | 340 | $109,760 +108% |
| Reno, NV | 380 | $106,190 +101% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 8,320 | $103,550 +96% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 59. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.