The median gross income of a Florida realtor was $41,500 in 2025, per the Florida Realtors member profile published in August 2026. The national median in that same report was $59,100. That is nearly eighteen thousand dollars of difference in the same job, in the same year.
It is worth having that figure in front of you before paying for a license course. Not because it should put anyone off, but because the averages that circulate online come from job boards estimating salaries, not from a survey of people doing the work.
Where the figure comes from
The Florida Realtors profile is an oversample of the national NAR profile: it surveys members in the state and reports their results separately. The 2026 edition covers 2025 and says this:
- Median gross income from real estate activity: $41,500 in Florida, $59,100 nationally.
- Transactions for the typical agent: five in Florida, nine nationally.
- Median business expenses: $8,240, a 2024 figure.
- Median sales volume for brokerage specialists: $1.2 million in 2025.
- Experience of the typical realtor: eleven years. Age: 58. Women: 63%.
- Hours worked per week: 35.
- Only 5% say real estate was their first career.
The previous edition, from September 2025, put the median at $48,500. So the Florida figure dropped by about seven thousand dollars between one edition and the next. That deserves care: these are two different surveys of two different samples, not the same people tracked over time.
The gap with the country is in the transaction count
Five against nine. That is where almost all of the gap sits, and there is no need to look further. A Florida realtor closes a little over half the deals the national median closes in a year, so they earn a little over half as much.
The underlying reason is competition. Florida carries an enormous density of licenses relative to its sales volume, which spreads the same number of transactions across more people. Active license counts by county are available in the public DBPR registry, which is the source anyone publishing that arithmetic is using.
Gross is not net, and the difference is published
The $41,500 is gross income from real estate activity. The same report puts median business expenses at $8,240, which leaves roughly $33,000 before tax. Then come the costs a salaried employee never pays out of pocket: self-employment tax, health insurance, association and MLS dues, the license itself, errors and omissions coverage.
The report publishes no median net income, so any "what you actually keep" figure you read elsewhere is an estimate by whoever wrote it. The honest calculation is the one above: gross minus business expenses, and down from there depending on your tax situation.
What gets worked for that money
The same report puts the typical realtor at 35 hours a week and median sales volume for brokerage specialists at $1.2 million. Together those two figures describe full-time work. It is not weekend side income, however many people come in expecting it to be.
And those are 35 hours as an annual average, which in this job never spread evenly. The week of a closing and the week a contract falls apart look nothing like August with no appointments. That unevenness is what makes the annual figure, on its own, such a poor planning tool.
The median hides two different jobs
A median of $41,500 does not mean most people earn that. It means half earn less. And in this business the distribution is wide open: income concentrates among those with years behind them, a book of clients and referrals coming in, while someone starting out competes for the same leads with none of that. The national figures by experience bracket, with their source, are in the recruiting guide.
That the typical Florida realtor has eleven years of experience and is 58 years old says something similar by another route: the ones who stay, stay a long time. And the 5% who report real estate as a first career means almost everyone arrives from another job, with expenses already running and no room for a bad year.
The arithmetic you can run on your own numbers
Medians are for placing yourself, not for planning. For planning there is a three-factor calculation you can run in a spreadsheet, and it is the same one any broker would use to project your year:
- Transactions per year. Start from what you genuinely believe you will close, not from what you would like to. The state median is five.
- Average commission on your side. It depends on the price of the house and on what you negotiate in each agreement, which since August 2024 is agreed in writing and separately. On a $400,000 house, 2.5% is $10,000 of gross commission.
- Your split. The percentage left after the brokerage takes its share, and the factor most people ignore when comparing offers.
Five transactions at $10,000 is $50,000 of gross commission generated. At an 80% split, you keep $40,000 before expenses. At 70%, $35,000. Those five thousand dollars are exactly the conversation to have before signing with a brokerage rather than after.
The split has fine print, and it is on file
Almost no brokerage publishes its terms, but the publicly traded ones have to file them. The agent agreement eXp Realty filed as an exhibit to its 2024 annual report, in the form version dated November 4, 2024, states in section 4 that gross commission is split 80% to the agent and 20% to the company, and that once the company share reaches $16,000 within a twelve-month period it stops being collected until that period ends.
That is a cap, and it changes the arithmetic entirely: once reached, what you generate after it stays with you. At 80/20 with a $16,000 cap, the cap arrives after generating $80,000 of gross commission in the year. Below that figure the cap does not exist in practice, and that is where half of Florida agents sit.
What the agreement does not state is which fixed dues and per-transaction fees are charged separately: it refers those to internal policies that are not filed. Ask for them in writing and add up the full year, because they are what turns a good split into a bad invoice.
What to do with this if you are deciding
If you are thinking about getting licensed, the useful figure is not the state median: it is how many months you can go without being paid. The first closing takes time, the second takes less, and a median of five transactions a year means even a normal year has empty months.
If you already practice and you are comparing brokerages, the three-factor calculation above with your real numbers is worth more than any presentation. And if you run other people's business, the seven numbers that warn you before a year goes wrong are in another guide.
We come in only at the last part: keeping the count. Galilei Hub's Sales Book works out the split, the cap and the overrides at closing and exports them to accounting, so the year's projection does not live in a parallel spreadsheet. The rest of this guide works the same without us.