Short answer: A real estate year-end review answers one question: what actually produced your business this year? Pull your numbers, trace every closing back to where it came from by name, clean up your database, check how often you touched past clients, count the reviews you collected, then decide what to stop, keep and start. Do it in December, so the plan you write for next year is built on what worked instead of what you hoped would work.
By D.J. Paris, host of Keeping It Real with D.J. Paris. Updated November 2026.
Why do a year-end review before writing next year’s plan?
Because a plan built on guesses repeats this year’s mistakes. Carrie McCormick of the Carrie McCormick Real Estate Group with @properties, one of the top producers in Chicago, has run the same review every fall for more than two decades:
“Every November, I look back at the year and figure out what I did right. I figure out what I did wrong, and I try to create a business plan for the next year”
Carrie McCormick, A $170M Producer’s Predictions For 2023 (November 2022, at 06:00)
Paul Salter, a high-performance hypnotherapist and mindset coach who hosts our Inner Game of Real Estate Success series, walks his clients through the same exercise in December. His reason: success leaves clues, and you want to find them before you start spending next year’s time and money.
“Remember success leaves clues. And one of my favorite exercises to walk through with my clients this time of year is to reflect on the year. What has gone really well? What has produced the biggest return on investment financially, relationally, and then of course in all of the buckets of self-care.”
Paul Salter, How To Crush December And Pull Ahead Of Competition (December 2025, at 15:44)
How do you do a real estate year-end review?
Six steps. Block one afternoon for the first two and spread the rest over December.
Step 1: Gather this year’s numbers
Open your calendar, your CRM and your bank statements. Carrie’s list is a good starting point: listing appointments taken, deals closed, buyer appointments, days and hours worked, conversations per day, marketing spend, GCI and volume. “These are all data numbers,” she said, and if you kept a calendar all year, they’re easy to pull.
| Number | This year |
|---|---|
| Closed transactions (buyers / sellers) | |
| Listing appointments taken | |
| Buyer consultations held | |
| Days worked and weeks taken off | |
| Total marketing and lead spend | |
| GCI and take-home after split and fees | |
| Reviews collected |
If you don’t know a number, write “unknown.” That tells you what to start tracking next year (see the 5 metrics top producers watch).
Step 2: Trace every closing back to where it came from
This is the most useful hour of the whole review. Here’s the homework I gave listeners at the end of my episode with Megan Walters:
“So open up your last 20 closed transactions. And however many you’ve done in your past, maybe you don’t have 20. … Then I want you to count how many of those came from somebody you already knew. Now that number tells you exactly what to fund next year and what to cancel.”
D.J. Paris, 66 Deals at 28 with Zero Bought Leads (September 2026, at 54:49)
Write the source down by name, not by category. A line that just says referral tells you nothing. A line that names the past client who sent the deal, and where you first met that client, can show you two lead sources working at once.
Then line those sources up against what you spent. Carrie does it the same way: “look at where you spent the money and the lead sources that came from, what worked, what didn’t work.” She told us the review often makes the answer obvious, like finding that a run of listing appointments all came from one ad or one postcard. Those are the things to double down on.
Here is what the worksheet looks like. The rows are an example, not real data.
| Closing | Where it came from (by name) | Did you already know them? | What it cost you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Example: 123 Oak St, buyer | Referred by past client Sarah K. | Yes | $0 plus a thank-you gift |
| Example: 45 Elm Ave, seller | Open house sign-in, March | No | Signs and four Saturdays |
Step 3: Clean up your database
Most databases get bigger every year and less useful. Chase Craig, who co-owned City of Trees Real Estate and the Real Estate Growth Network in Boise and has been part of more than 6,000 transactions, says the mistake is treating every name the same. After you list everyone you know, the next question is “who am I willing to actually call.”
“Is they start with a big list. And then they treat them all equally. And that, that you don’t have time to treat a big list equally. You’d be much better off starting with a small tiny list and treating them like kings, right.”
Chase Craig, From Home Depot to $2 Billion in Real Estate (October 2025, at 26:36)
In December, go through the list and do three things:
- Delete or archive contacts you’ll never reach out to: dead leads with no reply in years, duplicates, vendors who went out of business.
- Tag the people you’d actually call, and mark past clients separately.
- Update what’s missing. December is a natural time to call past clients and say you’re updating your records for the new year, then confirm their address, birthdays and anniversaries so you have real reasons to reach out next year.
Step 4: Review how you stayed in touch with past clients
Pull every past client from this year and last year, and look at what they actually got from you. A closing gift and a holiday card isn’t a plan. Jenny Sommerlot of Peterson and Company with Keller Williams in central Minnesota built a December touch into her system that’s useful to the client:
“every December I make a call to all my buyers my new buyers from that year and make sure they’ve homesteaded their property I’ve had a few who have totally forgotten them who have been so appreciative that I saved them a couple thousand on property taxes”
Jenny Sommerlot, How To Become A Top Producer In A Rural Market (December 2024, at 42:43)
Homestead rules vary by state, so find the year-end task that fits your market, like a property tax appeal deadline or a home maintenance checklist. Then ask: did every past client hear from me at least once this year with something useful? If not, that’s a “start” for next year.
Step 5: Count the reviews you collected
Compare closings to reviews. If you closed 15 deals and got four reviews, you have a gap you can fix. Bobby Kerr, founder of LOC8 My Business, which works on Google Business Profiles for agents, says the timing matters most: “you have to request reviews when your customer is the happiest.” His team recommends the closing table, not an email weeks after the move. Add a “review asked / review received” line to your closing checklist for next year.
Step 6: Decide what to stop, keep and start
Now use what you found. Make three short lists:
- Stop: spending and activities that produced no closings. Carrie applied this to her own postcard mailings, which cost a lot and weren’t returning enough: “either I’m gonna cut back on it or I need to perfect it.”
- Keep: the sources from step 2 that produced deals, especially people you already knew.
- Start: the gaps from steps 3 to 5, like a past-client touch, a review ask at closing, or tracking a number you didn’t have.
Do the same for your time. Carrie calls it a time audit: look at “what’s effective of my time, what is not effective of my time,” then build your daily routine around what works.
If you want a score to compare against next year, use a self-rating. Real estate coach Brent Scott walks agents through what he calls the Agent Wheel. He breaks the business into “four different quadrants, productivity growth systems and profitability,” with 12 parts in all, and has the agent rate each one:
“Now one means it needs major improvement. And 10 means you have mastered this skill.”
Brent Scott, What Happens In A Real Estate Coaching Session? (January 2025, at 15:55)
Pick the one or two lowest scores that matter most. Brent has agents put their attention on those for the next 90 days, then retake the whole exercise, because improving one area can make another slip.
What do you do with the review once it’s done?
Hand it to next year’s plan. Your “keep” list becomes the lead sources in your one-page business plan. Your real closings and conversion numbers become the starting point when you set your annual goals and work backward to daily activity. And your “stop” list frees up money for what’s working, which is where your marketing budget comes in.
When should a real estate agent do a year-end review?
Late November or early December, while there’s still time to act on what you find. Paul Salter’s warning is that December is when most agents take their foot off the gas, then spend February and March catching up.
Frequently asked questions
What’s the most important part of a year-end review?
Tracing each closing back to where it came from, by name. Counting how many came from people you already knew tells you what to fund next year and what to cancel.
What if I didn’t track my lead sources this year?
Rebuild it from memory and your files. For each closing, ask how you first met that client. It won’t be perfect, but it will be close enough to show a pattern. Then start tracking the source on every new lead in January.
How often should I clean my real estate database?
Do a full cleanup once a year in December and keep it up during the year. Chase Craig’s point is that a short list of people you’ll actually call beats a long list you treat the same.
Should a year-end review include more than business numbers?
Yes. Paul Salter has clients look at what produced the biggest return “financially, relationally” and in self-care. Time off, health and family belong in the review because they belong in the plan.
Listen to the full episodes
- A $170M Producer’s Predictions For 2023, with Carrie McCormick
- How To Crush December And Pull Ahead Of Competition, with Paul Salter
- 66 Deals at 28 with Zero Bought Leads, with Megan Walters
- From Home Depot to $2 Billion in Real Estate, with Chase Craig
- How To Become A Top Producer In A Rural Market, with Jenny Sommerlot
- Get Found on Google: The Real Estate Agent’s Guide to AI Search, with Bobby Kerr
- What Happens In A Real Estate Coaching Session?, with Brent Scott
Keeping It Real with D.J. Paris is a podcast for real estate agents, with more than 790 episodes of interviews with top-producing agents, coaches and industry leaders. Here’s how to listen.