It’s not their market. It’s not their brokerage. It’s not their zip code or their ad budget or how many followers they have on Instagram.
The agents who are genuinely thriving right now, closing deals consistently and building real businesses in a market that is still challenging, have one thing that separates them from everyone else: a resilient, growth-oriented mindset.
I know that sounds like something you’d see on a motivational poster. Stay with me, because I’m not talking about positivity as a personality trait. I’m talking about resilience as an operating system. And there’s a very real difference.
Let’s Talk About What’s Actually Happening in This Market
The numbers tell an honest story.
Roughly 75% of new agents quit within their first year. In 2025 alone, over 75,000 agents left the industry. That’s not a blip. That’s the market doing what markets do: separating the agents who have built something sustainable from the ones who were riding momentum. (Source: RealTrends, 2025.)
Thirty-year fixed mortgage rates are still hovering near 7%, which means buyers are cautious, decision timelines are longer, and deals that should close are stalling. Existing home inventory rose about 15.2% in 2025 and is projected to grow another 8.9% in 2026. (Source: National Association of Realtors, 2025 Housing Forecast.) More listings to compete for, more educated buyers who are slow to commit, and more pressure on commissions from tech-enabled discount models.
Here’s the thing. These conditions aren’t going away. High rates and a more competitive landscape are the new baseline, not a temporary inconvenience to wait out. The agents who understand that are the ones building something that will last.
What the Top Performers Are Actually Doing
Top-tier agents are not waiting for better conditions. According to RealTrends Verified, the highest-performing individual agents closed an average of 185 sides in 2024, slightly up from the prior year, despite low inventory and high rates. High-performing teams averaged over 600 sides and roughly $443 million in volume per team. (Source: RealTrends Verified, 2025 Rankings.)
That’s not luck. That’s what happens when agents stop reacting to the market and start leading within it.
So what exactly are they doing differently?
The Four Patterns of Agents Who Are Winning Right Now
1. They Know Their “Why” and They Lean Into It
The agents who stay in this business through hard cycles are not the ones who are just motivated by money. They’re motivated by something bigger: helping first-time buyers navigate a confusing process, serving the same community for decades, guiding families through generational transitions.
That purpose is not soft. It’s strategic. When a deal falls through, when rates spike, when a listing sits for three months and a seller gets frustrated, purpose is what keeps you from spiraling. It anchors your next move instead of letting emotion drive it.
If you haven’t written out a one-paragraph mission statement for your real estate business, do it this week. Answer three questions:
- Who do you serve best?
- What problem do you solve beyond paperwork?
- What do you want your legacy to be in your market?
That statement becomes a filter. Every decision, every niche, every marketing investment runs through it.
2. They Have a Growth Mindset, Not a Fixed One
Growth-minded agents treat every market shift as a reason to learn. Fixed-mindset agents treat every market shift as proof that things are getting worse.
The practical difference shows up in how they respond to failure. A growth-oriented agent loses a listing and asks, “What can I adjust?” A fixed-mindset agent loses a listing and blames the market. One of those agents will still be in business in two years. The other won’t.
The best example I’ve seen of this recently is the agent who shifted their entire buyer conversation when rates climbed. Instead of talking price per square foot, they started mapping out total cost of living for each home: property taxes, commute costs, utility averages, HOA trends. They repositioned themselves as a financial advisor, not just a door-opener. Deals started closing because buyers felt genuinely informed and guided.
That kind of pivot doesn’t happen from talent. It happens from a willingness to keep learning.
Build a growth-mindset routine:
- Schedule a monthly “learning hour.” Study new consumer protection rules, local inventory stats, and one new tech or marketing tool.
- After every closed deal, win or loss, log three lessons in a simple journal or spreadsheet. Patterns will emerge over time.
- Follow the market data closely. Agents who know their numbers are never caught off guard.
3. They Practice Emotional Resilience Like a Skill
This is the piece most agents overlook. They think resilience just means toughing it out. It doesn’t.
Resilience is the ability to recover quickly, not just to endure. And it is absolutely a learnable skill. Studies of resilient professionals across high-pressure fields show that those who reframe stress as a challenge, rather than a threat, maintain significantly higher performance through periods of volatility. The ones who build simple daily recovery habits, things like a five-minute morning reflection, a post-deal debrief ritual, or a coach call after a rough week, sustain their energy in a way that “just grind harder” agents simply can’t.
Burnout is real. I’ve seen it take out talented agents who had everything else in place. The ones who avoid it are not tougher. They’re smarter about recovery.
A few small habits that work:
- Start each morning with five minutes identifying what you control versus what you don’t. This one practice alone can shift the tone of your entire day.
- After a deal falls through or a negotiation drains you, have a go-to reset ritual. A walk. A phone call with a mentor. A journal entry. Something intentional.
- Define your off-hours and protect them. Seriously. Notifications off. Recovery time is not laziness. It’s strategy.
4. They Build Systems, Not Streaks
The agents who thrive are not the ones who have amazing months followed by empty months. They’re the ones who show up consistently because they’ve built simple, repeatable systems that do not rely on motivation to run.
Daily lead follow-up. A structured prospecting block. A quarterly plan review. A small number of key metrics tracked every week: appointments set, buyer-ready leads in pipeline, follow-up conversion rate. These are not complicated. They’re just intentional.
When you have a system, a slow week doesn’t derail you. You know exactly what to do next because you built the roadmap before things got hard.
A Real-World Example Worth Stealing
One agent who was struggling with offer contingencies and negotiation fatigue made one decision that changed everything: she joined a structured coaching group focused on mindset, communication drills, and role-play scenarios.
Within a year, her closing ratio improved. Her negotiations felt less emotionally draining. Her referrals increased. Not because the market got easier, but because she got better at managing herself through the hard parts. Her clients felt heard and guided. And that feeling is what drives referrals more than any marketing you’ll ever run.
For Brokers: Resilience Is a Culture Play
If you’re leading a team or a brokerage, this matters even more for you.
The agents who leave your shop are not always leaving for a better commission split. They’re leaving because they felt unsupported and unprepared when things got hard. Resilience has to be modeled, taught, and recognized from the top.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Build a structured onboarding and coaching cadence. New agents should enter a 90-day learning track with weekly check-ins covering mindset, lead generation, and client communication. They should never feel like they’re figuring it out alone.
Create a resilience playbook for common scenarios. Rate spikes. Listings that sit. Back-to-back financing hiccups. One-page guides with talking points, next-step checklists, and yes, even self-care prompts. Agents who feel equipped perform. Agents who feel alone quit.
Reward behavior, not just production. Recognize the agents who show up consistently, follow through on their follow-up, and seek feedback, even if their closed-sides number is still growing. Tie recognition to your agency’s core values. Resilience that goes unseen doesn’t get repeated.
The Bottom Line
The market is not going to hand anyone a good year. It hasn’t done that in a while, and the agents who are waiting for conditions to improve before they invest in themselves are the ones you’ll read about in the next round of exit statistics.
The agents who thrive this year will be the ones who went all IN on their mindset before any of the external stuff got easier. They clarified their purpose. They built their resilience. They created repeatable systems. And they treated every challenge as a curriculum, not a verdict.
That’s exactly what I wrote about in The INth Degree. The agents and entrepreneurs who stand out aren’t the ones who had the easiest path. They’re the ones who committed to becoming more intentional than their circumstances.
If you want to dig deeper into what it looks like to build a business that holds up through any market, visit tiffanymcquaid.com and let’s keep the conversation going.
This industry has room for the committed. Are you in?
❤️ Tiffany
Sources:
- RealTrends. (2025). RealTrends Verified 2025 Agent and Team Rankings. realtrends.com
- National Association of Realtors. (2025). 2025 Housing Forecast and Inventory Report. nar.realtor
