I mean to say that among Realtors he was pretty elite, whatever that means. Put another way, he dealt in million dollar listings, not just average family homes.

If you were getting any significant number of million $ homes, why would he keep the day job? Real estate transaction fees are pretty high.

Government pension, avoiding traffic tickets among other benefits, I'm sure.

It's possible that his connections and encounters from his work as an agent formed the foundation of his 'book' - and being a real estate agent is like 99% about building that book and 1% about doing things the rest of us might refer to as "work". Many if not most of the successful agents I know are moonlighters for this very reason.

Not ragging on real estate agents, it's not an easy thing to pull off; convincing someone to hand you 3-6% of the biggest financial transaction they've ever made just for you to negotiate for what's probably a grand total of a few hours and do some online shopping. And they do provide value insofar as knowing the landscape can really help a client avoid getting bent over a barrel.

Source: did it myself (poorly, which is why I'm in tech).

They might like the work.

Depending on the location, soon enough million dollar listings will be average family homes.

Yeah, I know right? And the higher end you go has nothing to do with any competence - your clientele becomes more and more like the fucktards that bought into SBF.