When Gary Keller, founder of Keller Williams, presented Ben Caballero with the coveted Pinnacle Award for Real Estate Entrepreneurship five years ago, his comments were prophetic.
Looking at Ben in front of a sea of KW agents at their Mega Camp event in Austin, Texas, Gary Keller explained the award. “Keller Williams a few years ago decided a few years ago,” Keller said, “that if no one else was going to try and identify and acknowledge and respect the top real estate agents in the industry – not in Keller Williams but in the industry. That if no one else is going to do this then we’re going to do it, and we’re going to do it in the most unbiased way possible.”
Then he added this: “And the way that you do that is you acknowledge, and you respect, and you appreciate those individuals who are excelling at levels that the world doesn’t fully appreciate, right?”
Last week, the world’s first $1 billion individual real estate agent, Ben Caballero released his 2018 production numbers. Ben, who also is the first agent to become a Guinness World Record holder for real estate sales, just broke the $2 billion barrier in real estate sales for an individual agent.
His numbers: Ben as the individual listing agent for more than 60 builder clients recorded 5,793 total home sales totaling $2,270,911,643 last year. As Gary Keller says, Ben is excelling at a level that the world doesn’t fully appreciate. I mean how can it?
If that wasn’t uber-impressive enough, Ben also listed 668 homes for brokerages owned by his Texas home builder clients for an additional sales volume of $228,992,475.
When you combine these two numbers, Ben’s home sales totaled almost $2.5 billion with 6,461 total homes sold, all in the state of Texas.
To put Ben’s number in perspective, let’s focus on his individual production of $2.27 billion and 5,793 sales. Ben sold more than 100 homes a week – that’s nearly 16 homes a day, every single day of the year, or almost three home sales every business hour.
And his total production volume: $2.27 billion – with a “B.” Try to appreciate Ben’s billions this way: 2 billion seconds is 64 years. How long are 2 million seconds? 24 days. The difference is as staggering as the numbers he is achieving year after year.
If you laid 2 billion pennies side-by-side, they would be 12,426 miles long and could more than circle the circumference of the planet Mercury. If you took 2 billion $100-dollar bills and stacked them, they would be 1,262 miles high: five times higher than the orbit of the International Space Station.
But remember, Ben didn’t do just $2 billion in business last year, he did $2.27 billion, so his numbers are even harder to fathom. All I can say is once again “Congratulations Ben” for another year of out of this world numbers.
Here is the news release announcing Ben’s 2018 production, including his volume in Dallas (over $1 billion), Houston (nearly $1 billion), Austin and San Antonio:
Ben Caballero Becomes the World’s First $2 Billion Real Estate Agent
Top-ranked Realtor® 2018 Sales Totaled Nearly 5,800 Homes for a Volume of $2.27 Billion
DALLAS, TX (February 12, 2019) – Ben Caballero, the first Guinness World Record holder for home sales, broke his world record for an individual real estate agent, selling 5,793 homes totaling $2,270,911,643 in a single year. That’s according data from local MLSs of the Houston Association of REALTORS®, North Texas Real Estate Information Systems, San Antonio Board of REALTORS® and the Austin Board of REALTORS®.
Ranked as the No. 1 real estate agent for nearly a decade by REAL Trends for both total sales and number of transactions, Caballero also listed an additional 668 homes for brokerages owned by home builders for an extra sales volume of $228,992,475. His combined real estate sales for the year totaled $2.499 billion with 6,461 homes sold, all in the state of Texas.
“Texas is the world’s greatest housing market and one of the best economies in the world,” said Caballero. “It’s said everything is bigger in Texas. Well, this number is so big even I’m little surprised by it — and delighted. But this may well be a record that lasts a year or two,” he said, noting that 2019’s homes sales in Texas are showing signs of leveling off.
Caballero is the broker-owner of HomesUSA.com®, based in Addison, Texas. With his HomesUSA.com platform, he manages MLS listings for more than 60 builders in Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. Caballero is the number one ranked real estate agent on REAL Trends’ definitive “The Thousand” list, as published in The Wall Street Journal for both number of home sales and total annual dollar volume.
Significantly, Caballero, in addition to his individual record, is the only individual real estate agent ever to surpass the total production of highest ranked real estate teams on “The Thousand” list, as measured by total sales transactions (sides) and total transaction volume, as verified by REAL Trends. In 2017 Caballero sold more than twice as many homes in both dollar volume and number of homes than those teams that appear on the most recent list. The REAL Trends list for 2018 sales production is expected to be published this June.
To put Caballero’s 2018 numbers in perspective: Ben sold an average of more than 100 homes a week – nearly 16 homes a day, every single day of the year, and almost three home sales every business hour.
The First Billion Dollar Agent becomes the First 2-Billion Dollar Agent
In 2016, Caballero became the first real estate agent in America personally responsible for more than $1 billion in home sales. He sold 3,556 homes totaling $1.444 billion and that production landed him the title of a Guinness World Record holder last year. He holds the official title for “Most annual home sales transactions through MLS by an individual sell side real estate agent.”
Unlike most top-producing agents who sell multimillion-dollar mansions to celebrities in Beverly Hills and Malibu or to Wall Street titans in Manhattan, Caballero home sales are to everyday people in Texas. His business serves builders selling homes in communities throughout Austin, Houston, San Antonio, as well as his hometown market of Dallas-Ft. Worth.
By The Numbers
Caballero’s total sales transactions for his builder clients in four Texas markets in 2018 was up 21 percent n the last year, from 4,799 sales in 2017 to 5,793 sales in 2018. His total sales volume increased 19 percent, totaling $2,270,911,643 in 2018, up from $1,905,970,827 in 2017. His average sales price for 2018 was $392,446.
For the second year in a row, he has been the only individual agent ever to sell more than $1 billion in home sales within a single market. Last year, Caballero sold 3,496 homes in the Dallas-Ft. Worth market, up from 3,035 homes he sold in 2017. His total sales volume for Dallas-Ft. Worth in 2018 was $1,384,874,852, up from $1,200,477,303 in 2017. The average home price in Dallas-Ft. Worth Caballero sold was $392,009.
In Houston, he sold more than one thousand homes (1,022) in 2018, with sales totaling $401,942,780. Caballero also sold 923 homes in Austin last year, with sales totaling $362,063,283. In San Antonio, he sold 288 homes, with sales totaling $96,464,314.
How Does Caballero Do It?
Through the HomesUSA.com platform Caballero invented, he leverages online technology to achieve his top-ranking sales volume.
HomesUSA.com’s cloud-based listing management and marketing platform streamlines the MLS listing process and speeds up the sales process for homebuilders. It allows builders to provide more accurate data to consumers while also increasing a builder’s ability to market new home listings to real estate agents.
About Ben Caballero and HomesUSA.com®
Ben Caballero is a Guinness World Record holder1, earning him the reputation as the world’s most productive real estate agent. Top-ranked in America by REAL Trends since 2013, as published in the Wall Street Journal, he is also the only agent to exceed $1 billion in residential sales transactions in a single year; a feat first achieved in 2015 and repeated each year since. An award-winning innovator, Caballero is the founder and CEO of HomesUSA.com, Inc., working with more than 60 home builders in Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. He recently released a podcast series available on iTunes and Google Play. Learn more at HomesUSA.com |Twitter: @bcaballero – @HomesUSA | Facebook: /HomesUSAdotcom.
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1 “Most annual home sale transactions through MLS by an individual sell side real estate agent – current.” – Guinness World Records – awarded 2018
Congratulations Ben, and welcome to the multi-Billion dollar club. I myself passed the $2 billion dollar mark a few years ago [albeit not in a single year – Editor’s note].