AgentBrief's Mike Simon: Choosing the Right Real Estate Agents Is Key to a Profitable Referral Pipeline

For loan officers building a referral pipeline, the default strategy has long been to follow as many real estate agents as possible and hope that volume translates into business. Mike Simon, founder of AgentBrief, argues that this approach is backward and often leads to underused data tools. AgentBrief provides hourly MLS monitoring, delivering a live feed of agent activity to settlement service professionals. However, Simon emphasizes that the data only becomes valuable if you are tracking the right agents—not simply the most active ones.

Listing volume is the most obvious signal to chase, but Simon warns it is only half the picture. "How many new listings are they able to acquire every year? That’s a big one," he said. "But second to how many listings they acquire, it’s really important for a loan officer to be paying attention to how many they actually close." In a slower market, a high number of listings can be misleading; some may be new construction, others may sit unsold for months, and a loan officer chasing volume alone may waste time on agents who never close the deal that made them look attractive.

Simon points to a third metric that gets even less attention: buy-side representation. This is a smaller, more finite number, but it tells a loan officer something a listing count cannot. A closed buy-side deal is confirmed business, not just activity that might or might not turn into a transaction. Together, the three signals Simon flags are listing volume, closing rate, and buy-side representation. None is useful on its own. An agent who lists constantly but rarely closes is not the same opportunity as an agent with fewer listings and a consistent close rate.

Simon has heard the counterargument many times: invest early in newly licensed or low-volume agents, and they will be loyal later. He pushes back every time. "You got to feed your family. You got to pay your rent," he said, describing the instinct to focus on producing agents rather than potential ones. Investing time in agents who are not currently doing business, he adds, is not wrong as a small part of a strategy, but it should not be the strategy.

That distinction matters more in a real-time system than in a traditional CRM. When data arrives on a delay, the cost of following the wrong agent is diluted across weeks of missed context. When alerts are hourly, every notification a loan officer acts on is time spent on that specific agent instead of someone else. Following agents without transaction volume to back them up means spending real-time attention on stale opportunities.

Simon argues that the shift to real-time alerts has changed how loan officers should behave once they get a notification. In the past, delayed data meant a more passive response. Now, with alerts landing within an hour of MLS activity, the same information demands a faster, more deliberate move. "This is real. This is new that just happened. I can move fast and move first," Simon said, describing the mindset a loan officer needs once they trust the timing of the data they are acting on.

That trust only holds up if the agent behind the alert is worth the response. A loan officer who filters for listing volume, closing rate, and buy-side activity before following an agent is positioned to act on every alert with confidence. One who follows broadly and reactively ends up with a feed full of noise, no matter how fast the data arrives.

For loan officers weighing how AgentBrief’s real-time signal compares to the historical data most lenders have relied on, the platform’s title and escrow solution shows how the same filtering approach has already worked in a settlement services vertical built on the identical referral dynamic. AgentBrief services are currently available in select markets.

AgentBrief is an AI-powered real-time MLS intelligence platform built for settlement service professionals, including title reps, loan officers, and insurance providers. The platform monitors agent activity hourly and delivers push notifications that help professionals reach real estate agents at the right moment, with the right context. This article is based on information provided by the expert source cited above. It is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or real estate advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any real estate or financial decisions. Individuals or companies mentioned may have a commercial relationship with KeyCrew.