How Sales Are Verified

What counts as a verified sale

A sale appears on a city page only when it is matched to a public listing record that shows three things: the address, the sold price and the sale date. Each sale links to that record, with the source named under the link, so you can open it and check it yourself.

✓Matched to a public listing record showing the address, sold price and sale date.

✓Only sales inside the city limits appear on that city's page.

✓Neighborhood, square footage and side are shown only when a source confirms them.

Where the records come from

We start from each agent's own closed-sales records and then confirm each sale against a listing record. Typical sources include:

MLSListings agent closed-listings pages and property pages
The agent's brokerage or team website (sold listings and property pages)
Agent pages on Homes.com, Redfin and Zillow
Brokerage listing records such as Sotheby's, Compass and Coldwell Banker

When two sources disagree on a detail, we use the one that is closest to the official listing record and leave out anything we can't settle.

Which agents and sales are featured

City pages feature leading local agents, drawn from published industry rankings such as the RealTrends Verified list for that city. Agents on a city page are not listed in ranked order.

For each agent we feature up to 10 recent closings inside the city. A sale is left out when:

it is outside the city limits, even if it is nearby;
we can't tie it to the agent through a source we can open;
it isn't a standard home sale, such as a commercial property or a building that is not a home;
it was pending or not yet closed when we checked.

We never show a total sales count for an agent on a city page, because featured sales are a sample of recent work, not a full record.

What each column means

Neighborhood	Shown when a listing record names it, for example in the listing remarks or community name. Otherwise a dash.
Sold Price	The closing price on the listing record.
$/Sq Ft	Sold price divided by the square footage on the listing record. A dash when no size is listed.
Property Type	As listed: single-family home, condo, townhouse, duplex, multifamily or land.
Side	Listing, Buyer or Both, only when a record says which side the agent represented. If another agent is the listing agent, the agent probably represented the buyer, but we still show a dash unless a source says so.
Sold	Month and year the sale closed.
Listing Details	A link to the listing record, with the source named underneath.

A dash means the source didn't say. It never means the information is wrong or hidden.

Price thresholds

Each city page works out its own price bands from all the featured sales on that page, so "luxury" in one city isn't forced onto another.

Luxury: the 85th percentile of featured sale prices, rounded to the nearest $250,000. In San Jose that is $2,750,000.
Entry-level: the 25th percentile of featured sale prices, rounded to the nearest $100,000. In San Jose that is $1,200,000.
Median price per square foot: the median across featured sales that list a size. In San Jose that is $927, from 201 sales.

How specialties are assigned

The specialties under each agent come from their featured sales only, using the same rules for every agent:

Single-family homes	More than half of featured sales are houses.
Luxury homes	3 or more featured sales at or above the city's luxury threshold.
Condos and townhomes	3 or more condo or townhouse sales.
Entry-level homes	3 or more sales under the city's entry-level threshold.
Multifamily and investment	2 or more duplex, triplex or fourplex sales.
Buyer and seller representation	At least one confirmed buyer-side or both-sides sale, plus a confirmed listing-side sale.
Seller representation	3 or more confirmed sides, all on the listing side.

How rankings work

Ranking pages group agents by category (individual agents, small, medium, large and mega teams, and brokerages) and by state and city. You can sort a ranking by volume or by median sale price, and every ranked agent links to the verified closings behind their position.

Each ranking shows the date it was last checked.

Updates and corrections

Every page shows the month it was last checked. Listing records can change after publication, so the linked record is always the best source for the latest details.

If you spot a sale that looks wrong, contact us with a link to the record and we'll check it again.

See verified San Jose sales