Top Gun Team's Retention Model Challenges Real Estate Turnover Norms in DFW

Agent turnover is a persistent challenge in real estate, but one Southlake, Texas-based team is bucking the trend. Justin Nimergood, who leads Top Gun Team, says he has not lost a single agent since founding the team. That retention record is the centerpiece of a deliberate strategy to make loyalty, not just production, the metric that defines success in the Dallas-Fort Worth market.

Most commission structures in real estate reward production alone: the more an agent closes, the better their split. Nimergood built Top Gun Team's split structure differently. Newer agents pay a fair share upfront, similar to industry norms, but agents who stay for two, five, and ten years see their splits improve specifically for tenure, independent of whether their production changed. His reasoning is direct: a split structure based only on production rewards someone for leaving as soon as a better production-based deal appears elsewhere. A structure that also rewards time on the team gives agents a reason to stay even when a marginally better production split is available somewhere else.

Nimergood is careful about how he frames the zero-turnover claim. He does not expect a zero percent turnover rate to last forever, and he separates turnover he considers acceptable, such as an agent relocating out of state or country, from turnover tied to team culture or benefits, which he considers a problem he is responsible for fixing. So far, he says none of his departures have fallen into that second category, because he has not had any departures at all. He wants agent retention to be the team's leading differentiator in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, ahead of production numbers or growth speed. His stated goal is for Top Gun Team to become synonymous with keeping agents for the long term, not just recruiting them.

Another unusual element is the language in his agent agreements. Every agent who joins signs what he calls a lifetime partnership agreement, a term he says is rare in an industry where most agreements run six months to a year, or carry no specific term at all. He is precise about the distinction: it is not a lifetime employment contract. It is framed as a partnership, because he considers every agent on the team a business partner rather than someone working for him. The word lifetime is used intentionally, he says, to get agents thinking past a short-term stint and toward what their career could look like if this became the last team they ever needed to join.

When asked what legacy he wants to leave, Nimergood does not point to sales volume. He says he wants to help create multiple millionaires among the agents on his team, on the belief that agents who reach that level of success end up taking on bigger roles and more responsibility across the industry, not just within Top Gun Team. He has seen agents use the financial stability they build on the Top Gun Team to help others, and he hopes that ripple effect becomes part of the team's lasting legacy.

For agents evaluating teams in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the retention record and the lifetime partnership language are two concrete signals worth weighing against the more common, production-only split structures found elsewhere in the market. The team's approach could influence how other brokerages think about compensation and culture, particularly in a competitive market where recruiting top talent is a constant focus. As the team continues to grow, its ability to maintain its retention record will be a key test of whether loyalty-based models can succeed at scale. For more information, visit TopGunTeam.org.