If you’ve ever typed "Top Realtor in Norwalk CT" into Google, you’ve probably seen lots of marketing claims but very little actual data. We decided to change that. Using five full years of MLS records, we ran the numbers to see who truly comes out on top in Norwalk’s residential market.
In order to achieve an objective result, we fed the data in ChtGPT from all the sales in Norwalk over the past 5 years. We then asked ChatGPT to determine and explain its methodology with how it chose the Number 1 Realtor. This gave us an unbiased, data-driven result, devoid of any one person’s perspective. Here is that process:
We started by feeding ChatGPT the entire list of sales from the past five years in Norwalk including single family homes, condominiums, and multi-family homes. This information came directly from the Smart MLS, which is the main MLS in Connecticut. For those who don’t know what the MLS is, it’s the database of all sales used by Realtors to market their listings. There are sales that we have made and I am sure other agents have made that weren’t included here, but the amount is likely negligible in decision-making and almost impossible to fully track.
We then gave it this prompt:
"I would like you to write a blog post about who is the #1 Realtor in Norwalk CT. I will give you the entire sales history for the past five years for single family homes, condominiums, and multi-family homes, all residential, and using your own methodology, which you should explain, I would like you to determine by your own metrics who is the top Norwalk Realtor. Check best practices online for determining this, and come up with your own unbiased conclusion. Please explain your entire process."
Here is the result taken directly from the AI Chatbot (with no edits to content, just to format and structure pulling the exact information the chat bot provided):
(START OF CHATGPT OUTPUT)__________________________________________________
Here’s a data-driven, fully transparent blog post you can publish. I analyzed your full MLS export (single-family, condo, and multi-family) for Norwalk, CT over the last ten years and applied an industry-grounded methodology to identify the #1 Realtor.
How “#1” Is Determined (Best Practices + Our Composite)
Across the industry, the two headline measures are sales volume ($) and transaction sides (a “side” is one representation on either list or buy side). That’s how national rankings like RealTrends structure leaderboards (volume and sides) and how MLS “Market Share / Ranking Reports” typically work.
Quality indicators commonly used by brokerages and ops teams include Sale-to-List Price Ratio (SP/LP) and Days on Market (DOM). These are widely referenced performance metrics for agents.
Our composite score weights these factors to balance volume and consistency with execution quality:
- Total Sales Volume ($) – 40%
- Total Transaction Sides – 20%
- Weighted SP/LP Ratio – 15% (weighted by list price; excludes missing list/close values)
- Leadership/Consistency – 15% (count of years the agent ranked #1 by volume in Norwalk)
- Median DOM (listing side only) – 5% (lower is better)
- Norwalk Market Share ($) – 5%
How credits were assigned per closing
- Listing agent = 1.0 credit; Co-list agent = 0.5
- Buyer agent = 1.0 credit; Co-buyer agent = 0.5
- Dollar volume and ratios are weighted by these credits.
(This mirrors how many MLS market-share reports treat sides and allows fair credit for co-representation, while staying aligned with the industry’s emphasis on volume and sides.)
Who Is the #1 Realtor in Norwalk, CT? (Past 5 Years)
Scope & Window
- Market: Norwalk (MLS City = “Norwalk”)
- Property types: Single-family, condos, multi-family (residential only)
- Period: Sept 17, 2020 → Sept 15, 2025
- Attribution credits: Listing = 1.0, Co-List = 0.5, Buyer = 1.0, Co-Buyer = 0.5
- Composite score weights (unchanged):
Volume 40% • Sides 20% • Weighted SP/LP 15% • Annual #1-by-volume count 15% • Listing-side Median DOM 5% • Market Share 5%
🏆 Overall #1 by Composite (Past 5 Years)
Joe Balestriere
- Transactions (credited): 167.5
- Norwalk Dollar Volume: $89,829,429 (credited)
- Weighted SP/LP: ~1.032
- Median DOM (listing only): 21 days
- Years ranked #1 by annual volume (within window): 1
- Norwalk $ market share: ~1.07%
- Composite score: 0.849
Why this ranks #1: In the last 5 years, Joe leads on overall throughput (sides), posts top-tier volume, maintains a >100% SP/LP on a list-price-weighted basis, and demonstrates strong listing execution (low median DOM). The composite balances all of these against leadership consistency.
Methodology: Full Walkthrough
- Filter to Norwalk
I included only records where City = Norwalk and CloseDate falls between 2020-09-17 and 2025-09-15. - Normalize agents & participation
For each closing, I created “participation rows” for Listing Agent, Co-List, Buyer Agent, and Co-Buyer, with credits of 1.0/0.5/1.0/0.5 respectively. This mirrors how “sides” are counted while responsibly attributing co-representation. - Compute core metrics
- Transactions (sides): sum of credits per agent.
- Dollar Volume: sum of ClosePrice × credit per agent. (This aligns to industry practice of ranking by total closed dollar volume.)
- SP/LP Ratio (quality proxy): per-closing ClosePrice/ListPrice, weighted by ListPrice × credit; excludes rows missing either price to avoid distortion. Widely used to gauge pricing and negotiation effectiveness.
- Median DOM (listing-side only): buyer-side agents don’t control DOM; this isolates listing execution. DOM is a standard performance metric.
- Leadership/Consistency: for each year, I ranked agents by annual Norwalk dollar volume (credit-weighted) and counted how many years each agent finished #1.
- Composite scoring
I applied the weights shown earlier (40/20/15/15/5/5), then ranked agents by composite score. The heavier weight on volume and sides mirrors national and MLS ranking norms; the addition of SP/LP, DOM, and consistency better reflects execution quality and sustained performance—not just a one-year spike. - Reasonableness checks
I spot-checked category leaders (by volume vs. sides) to confirm they align with expectations for a diverse market like Norwalk, and verified that missing list/close prices didn’t inflate ratios (these rows were excluded from the SP/LP calculation).
Category Leaders (Past 5 Years)
- Most Transactions (sides): Joe Balestriere (167.5)
- Highest Dollar Volume ($): Shown in the downloadable table (Joe is top-tier and within striking distance of #1 in volume over this window)
- Best Weighted SP/LP (min 15 credited sides) and fastest listing-side DOM: see tables for the top performers
I’ve put the full 5-year leaderboards in handy tables right in the workspace (Top 10 by Composite, by Dollar Volume, by Sides, and by SP/LP with a 15-deal floor). You can sort and screenshot as needed.
_________________________________________________________(END OF CHATGPT OUTPUT)
Our Discussion of the Results
The ChatGPT output promised the top five leaderboard, but we didn’t want to put other Realtor’s names into this blog post without their permission. So that won’t be available at this time.
It’s also important to understand why we chose a 5 year timeline instead of longer (or shorter). The data begins in September of 2020, which was after most of the major shutdowns occurred as a result of COVID-19. COVID-19 began at the beginning of 2020 and changed the world and the real estate market in a major way, bringing us into a new type of Seller’s Market, one we hadn’t seen in decades and probably unlike anything we have ever seen. The market changed, so it only seemed appropriate to use data going back that far since Realtors who were selling in the new market may have had different success prior to 2020. We wanted to avoid an apples to oranges comparison.
We understand that this blog post is self-serving, and there is no reason not to acknowledge that—after all, that’s how we operate out business and communication with our clients. But we wanted to give you the full story, using data and math, allowing the system to come to these determinations based on best-practices, and this was the result.
The Final Result
In the end, ChatGPT came to the determination to give Joe Balestriere the #1 ranking in Norwalk based on its own methodology, using the data directly from our governing MLS system. Joe has been marketing himself as the top Norwalk Realtor for the past few years, and this solidifies his stance, using the facts and based on Norwalk sales data.
If you are reading this and want to understand how Joe came to this success, we are here to help and show you our systems, marketing, and strategies that result in so many happy buyers and sellers.
📩 Contact Joe today to learn more about working together.
📞 Joe Balestriere, Realtor®
📲 Call/Text: 203-216-0670
