PITTSBURGH — As real estate agents across the nation face housing inventory shortages and an imminent change in their commission pay, Pittsburgh stands out as one of the best markets for full-time agents to work.

A recent report ranks Pittsburgh as the ninth-best place in the nation for full-time real estate agents, according to Clever, a St. Louis-based real estate data company.

“The thing that stood out for Pittsburgh was the relatively affordable home prices,” said Nick Pisano, the report author.

With an estimated $50,790 annual income, a Pittsburgh real estate agent working full time could buy a median-priced home in 4.2 years, according to the report.

An agent in San Francisco would have to work 18.2 years to buy a home there, even though agents can expect to earn about $14,000 more per year ($65,190), Clever said.

Clever’s ranking of top metropolitan areas for real estate agents focused on which cities offered the best career opportunities for real estate agents when it comes to their earnings, agent competition and typical commission rates.

Detroit took first place. According to Clever, Detroit-area real estate agents had nearly five times as many sales per agent, the lowest competition from fellow agents and some of the nation’s highest commission rates.

The worst city for real estate agents is San Francisco, according to Clever. There are 103 agents in San Francisco for every 100,000 residents.

“There are some hot markets like Phoenix, Atlanta and along the Sun Belt where they’re doing a lot of homes, but it’s also a very cutthroat market,” Pisano said. “The top 5% or 10% of agents might be doing great. But the lower tier of agents might struggle to find enough deals.

“That’s certainly not the case that we found in Pittsburgh.”

The Pittsburgh market has 41.7 full-time agents per 100,000 residents. The typical city has 63.5 agents per 100,000 residents, Clever said.

Clever based its analysis on the ratio of full-time agents to the total population in the metro area, instead of the ratio of real estate agents to the number of homes available for sale.

There were 8,317 total agents in the West Penn Multi-List in 2023 and 25,991 total sales in 2023.

Nearly half — 49% — of real estate agents made zero sales or just one sale in a 12-month period between late 2022 and late 2023, according to a recent study by the Consumer Federation of America.

Real estate sales have in general slowed down in the past two years as interest rates have risen from historic lows to around the 7% range, leading to fewer homeowners listing their homes for sale, and causing a dwindling inventory of homes available for purchase.

The housing industry is bracing for another transition next month as a result of a landmark settlement paid by the National Association of Realtors.

Home sellers as of Aug. 17, will no longer be required to pay the buyers’ agents commissions and both home sellers and homebuyers will be free to negotiate what they pay agents.

Pisano said data analysts at Clever used Bureau of Labor Statistics data to identify the number of full-time agents in a market, combined with census data to determine the number of agents per 100,000 residents.

“To find the total home sales per agent, we used data from Zillow to track the number of homes sold each month in a given metro,” Pisano said.

Clever estimates that full-time real estate agents in Pittsburgh sold 30 homes last year and earned about $50,790, compared to agents in Riverside, Calif. who made only $33,510 annually, the lowest salary of the metros studied.

John Petrack, executive vice president of the Realtors Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh, said he agrees that Pittsburgh is a great place to be a real estate agent, but he’s not sure about some conclusions reached by Clever.

Petrack said some of the data used in the analysis is outdated, although it’s the most recent data available.

“The last census was done in 2020,” Petrack said. “So, theoretically those numbers have changed drastically since then.

“We had a post-pandemic surge and the following jump in interest rates that vastly affected the market.”

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