When Should I Hire My First Real Estate Assistant?

You are ready for a first assistant when your production is at or above the experienced-agent level in 2025, a median of 10 transaction sides and about $3 million in sales volume, and when the work keeping you from the next appointment is administrative rather than client-facing. For 2025, the typical individual agent had nine transaction sides, with a median sales volume of $2.7 million for brokerage specialists, and the median gross income earned from real estate activities was $59,200. Those are the numbers to measure yourself against before you take on a payroll.

A first real estate assistant is an administrative hire, licensed or unlicensed, who absorbs the transaction paperwork, scheduling, file management, and vendor coordination that an agent does between appointments. In Arizona, what that person may and may not do is set by license law, not by your job description. The Arizona Department of Real Estate defines an unlicensed assistant as an unlicensed individual hired by an Arizona licensed real estate broker or salesperson as an assistant who is not engaging in any activity for which a real estate license is required.

Measure your production against the NAR experience benchmarks before you hire

The National Association of Realtors released its 2026 Member Profile in June 2026. The typical agent reported production in 2025. Agents with six or more years of experience had a median of 10 sides and about $3 million in sales volume in 2025.

Income tracks experience sharply. Realtors with 16 years or more of experience earned a median gross income of $88,500 in 2025, up from $78,900 the prior year, while those with two years or less experience earned a median of $8,000. The median gross income earned from real estate activities across all Realtors rose to $59,200 in 2025 from $58,100 in 2024.

Use those figures as your floor test. If your gross commission income is near the $59,200 median and your side count is near nine, a full-time hire consumes a large share of what you earn, and the hire has to generate replacement production, not just relief. If you are closer to the 10 sides and roughly $3 million in volume for agents with six or more years of experience, the arithmetic gets easier, because the hours you buy back can be redeployed into listing appointments. NAR reports these as national medians and does not break them out by state or by market.

One honest caution on the math: the figures above are gross income and gross volume, not what lands in your account. Run your own expense number before you commit to a salary, and coordinate the decision with your tax professional.

Offload transaction coordination first, because the task list is already defined

A real estate transaction coordinator manages the administrative side of a transaction from accepted offer to closing. The work includes tracking deadlines, organizing documents, communicating with buyers, sellers, and vendors, reviewing paperwork for completeness, and helping keep transactions compliant and on schedule.

The standard task list for the role is specific enough to hand off on day one:

• Tracking contracts, inspections, title work, appraisals, and closings.
• Scheduling inspections and coordinating repairs and maintenance.
• Submitting paperwork on time and maintaining accurate records.
• Creating timelines for important dates such as deadlines for loan and inspection contingency removals, and sending a reminder to the agent a few days before a deadline.
• Monitoring progress, providing updates to all parties, and troubleshooting issues.
• Working with clients, agents, lenders, title and escrow officers, and real estate attorneys.

That is the first block of work to move off your calendar, because it is deadline-driven, it repeats identically on every file, and it is the category where a missed date costs a client money. Becoming a transaction coordinator typically requires a high school diploma or equivalent plus relevant training or certification programs, which widens the pool you can hire from.

Scheduling and errand work comes next. Under the Arizona Department of Real Estate's unlicensed assistant policy, an unlicensed assistant may, under the direct supervision of an Arizona licensee, run personal errands for the licensee and perform clerical and administrative tasks including filing, copying, mailing, scanning, answering phones, forwarding calls, and transcribing callers' information.

Arizona license law sets a hard boundary on what an unlicensed assistant may do

Arizona Department of Real Estate Substantive Policy Statement No. 2025.02 covers unlicensed assistants and states that an unlicensed assistant may perform listed tasks under the direct supervision and employment of an Arizona licensee. Permitted errands include refilling flyer boxes, checking that signs are not blown down from a storm, and picking up or purchasing supplies for the office.

The permitted list also allows an unlicensed assistant to make phone calls to a repair or maintenance person and to an appraiser, and to transmit only instructions or information to clients, contractors, and inspectors. An unlicensed assistant may prepare a home for the licensee to show or preview the property, but may not have any discussions pertaining to the property.

The prohibitions are where agents get into trouble. An Arizona unlicensed assistant shall not originate documents, perform a walk-through inspection or tenant vacate inspection, or provide advice, pricing, or opinions of value to a consumer. All inclusions of an unlicensed assistant in advertising or marketing must indicate that the individual is "unlicensed," under A.R.S. § 32-2165(A). Arizona brokers must ensure unlicensed assistants are not performing acts that require a license or being advertised in a manner indicating that the person is licensed, under A.R.S. § 32-2165.

Two more points belong in the file before you hire. In Attorney General Opinion I18-002, issued April 12, 2018, the Arizona Attorney General concluded that persons handling property maintenance calls are exempt from Arizona real estate licensing requirements because they are providing administrative and support duties. That same 2018 opinion notes the statutory exemptions in A.R.S. § 32-2121(A) exempt unlicensed persons from real estate licensing requirements and should be consulted to determine whether particular unlicensed activity qualifies.

The Arizona Commissioner's Rules require the brokerage firm to supervise all real estate salespeople and to be liable for their business activities. If you are hiring, your designated broker is part of the conversation, not an afterthought to it.

Classification is decided by control, not by what you call the arrangement

Hunt Bldg. Corp. v. Com'n of Arizona decides whether that person is an employee. Under that test, a worker is an independent contractor if he is not subject to the rule or control of the person for whom work is done, except in accomplishing a certain result. A.R.S. § 23-902(C) defines an independent contractor as a person engaged in work for a business who, while so engaged, is independent of that business.

An individual does not qualify as an independent contractor simply by being called one or by the mere existence of an independent contractor's agreement, as the Arizona Department of Administration General Accounting Office states. The Arizona Supreme Court has held that the agreement between two people does not determine independent contractor or employee status; the nature of the relationship is determined by the facts and circumstances. An independent contractor is responsible only for the goal to be achieved and not how it is accomplished, while an employee must comply with another's instructions about when and how to work.

Read that last line against the job you are actually hiring for. A first assistant who works your hours, at your desk, on your systems, following your process, looks like an employee under a control test no matter what the contract says. Employing entities often inadvertently misclassify workers as independent contractors, exposing themselves to significant wage and tax liability.

Arizona gives you a tool to document intent. The Declaration of Independent Business Status law, approved as House Bill 2114, added A.R.S. §§ 23-1601 and 23-1602 to Title 23 of the Arizona Revised Statutes and became effective on August 6, 2016. It lets an Arizona business have an independent contractor sign a declaration affirming independent contractor status, which creates a rebuttable presumption that an independent contractor relationship exists. The declaration requires the contractor to acknowledge at least six listed items, including that the contractor operates its own independent business separate from the contracting party. A rebuttable presumption is not a shield; the underlying facts still control.

What each path costs you is different in kind. Hiring employees instead of contractors carries costs including federal and state payroll taxes and workers' compensation insurance, as the Arizona Department of Administration General Accounting Office notes. Arizona state law requires every employer with at least one employee to carry workers' compensation coverage. Arizona employees accrue 1 hour of earned paid sick time per 30 hours worked, with annual caps of 40 hours for employers with 15 or more employees and 24 hours for employers with fewer than 15. On the other side, an Arizona independent contractor is not protected by state and federal employment laws, the hiring company does not withhold taxes from the contractor's payment, and state and federal anti-harassment and antidiscrimination laws do not apply to the contractor.

A separate rule applies if your first hire is a licensed agent rather than an administrative assistant. Under I.R.C. § 3508, a qualified real estate salesperson is a "statutory non-employee" for federal tax purposes if licensed as a real estate agent, paid substantially all compensation based on sales or other output rather than hours worked, and working under a written contract stating they will not be treated as an employee for federal tax purposes. That carve-out is written for salespeople paid on output. It does not convert an hourly administrative assistant into a contractor.

Write the job description from the permitted task list and pay against a real wage floor

Build the description out of tasks you can point to, not adjectives. For an administrative hire, the federal occupational category "Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal and Medical" is described by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as performing routine administrative functions such as drafting correspondence, scheduling appointments, organizing and maintaining paper and electronic files, and providing information to callers. That is a clean spine for the first half of the role. The transaction coordinator duties listed above are the second half.

Then write the boundaries into the same document, because in Arizona they are part of the job. State that the assistant works under the direct supervision of a named Arizona licensee. State that the assistant does not originate documents, does not perform walk-through or tenant vacate inspections, and does not provide pricing or opinions of value to a consumer. State that any advertising or marketing including the assistant identifies the individual as "unlicensed," as A.R.S. § 32-2165(A) requires.

On compensation structure, three Arizona facts set the frame. The Arizona rate applies to nearly every private business in the state regardless of headcount, with narrow exceptions including relationship-based exclusions such as work for a parent or sibling. Flagstaff and Tucson have their own local minimum wage ordinances in effect; Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Scottsdale and the rest of the state have no local ordinance and use the state rate. Check the current Industrial Commission of Arizona figure before you set an hourly rate, and check whether a local ordinance applies to where the work is performed.

The hourly minimum applies to hourly, non-exempt employees. Salaried workers who qualify as exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act are governed by a separate weekly salary threshold instead, and Arizona uses the federal exempt-salary threshold. A first assistant paid a flat weekly salary and scheduled like an employee is a classification and overtime question, so resolve it before the first paycheck rather than after.

Four conditions that say wait

Hold off if any of these describe you.

Your production sits below the medians and the hire has no path to pay for itself. The median gross income earned from real estate activities was $59,200 in 2025, and Realtors with two years or less of experience earned a median gross income of $8,000 in 2025. At the newer end of that range, the question is lead generation, not staffing.

You want to hand off the work the license reserves for you. Pricing conversations, opinions of value, document origination, and property discussions cannot go to an unlicensed assistant under Arizona Department of Real Estate policy. If that is the relief you are after, you are describing a licensed hire with a different compensation structure and a different set of broker supervision obligations.

You intend to classify the person as an independent contractor while controlling when and how they work. An individual does not qualify as an independent contractor simply by being called one or by the mere existence of an independent contractor's agreement, and misclassification exposes the business to significant wage and tax liability.

You have not priced the employer obligations. Payroll taxes, workers' compensation coverage required of every Arizona employer with at least one employee, and earned paid sick time accruing at 1 hour per 30 hours worked are part of the cost of the hire, not extras bolted on later.

The Bottom Line

The production case for a first assistant firms up around the experienced-agent level in 2025, a median of 10 sides and about $3 million in volume, against a typical individual agent at nine sides and a median gross income of $59,200. The compliance case is decided separately and earlier: Arizona Department of Real Estate Substantive Policy Statement No. 2025.02 defines what an unlicensed assistant may do, and Arizona's "right to control" test from Hunt Bldg. Corp. v. Com'n of Arizona decides whether that person is an employee, whatever the agreement says. Get the job description, the classification, and the broker supervision right before the first day, because fixing any of the three after the fact is expensive.

If you are weighing a first hire and want the job description and classification reviewed against Arizona license law before you post the role, reach out to our team and we will walk through it with you.

Written by Laurie Johnson, part of the Kristan Cole Network team.

Sources

Pages read on October 12, 2026.

• Arizona Department of Administration  General Accounting Office (gao.az.gov)
• Unlicensed Assistants: No. 2025.02
• Whether certain activities of unlicensed assistants are exempt from real estate licensing requirements (azag.gov)
• National Association of Realtors: The Feature Sheet: 2026 Member Profile
• National Association of Realtors: Experienced REALTORS® Anchor the Industry as Housing Affordability Remains Top Hurdle, New NAR Report Finds
• National Association of Realtors: Even in a Tougher Market, REALTORS® Are Holding Their Ground