Fathom Realty Review: Is it Worth It?

Overall rating | Customer experience | Agent quality | Brand visibility and reach | Service value | Locations | Methodology

Founded in 2009, Fathom Realty is a digital real estate brokerage with an enormous team of agents (roughly 8,100 in 2022) serving 26 states. Although it's been operating for only 13 years, Fathom has risen up the ranks: in 2021, it became the 17th largest brokerage in the U.S. by sales volume (roughly $12 billion) and 10th largest for total closed transactions (nearly 38,500).

As such, the Fathom Realty brand has certainly generated a lot of hype. How does it compare with other brokerages? Below we’ll break down Fathom into four key areas and help you decide if it's the best brokerage for you.

Bottom line: Do we recommend Fathom Realty?

Fathom Realty is a decent choice of brokerage. Its agents offer sellers the basic services you would expect (such as MLS listings, staging, and professional photography), plus multiple ways to sell your home, including an all-cash offer and a trade-in service.

The agent network is massive: 8,100 agents across 26 states and Washington, DC. The average Fathom agent has around 10 years of experience and closes roughly 4.7 transactions per year. Customer reviews of Fathom are also high, though you might want to read some negative Better Business Bureau reviews first.

You should always pick an agent because you like them, not their brand, even if it's big and prestigious. Whether buying or selling, we recommend interviewing at least two to three agents (ideally from different companies) before deciding to work with one.

Fathom Realty: Our in-depth breakdown

Reputation and customer experience

Overall, customers seemed very pleased with their experience working with a Fathom agent. Notwithstanding the few negative reviews, the 139 reviews we found on Google had an aggregate rating of 4.7. That’s very high for a brokerage that has 8,100+ agents and completes 38,400+ transactions per year.

We were curious about the themes among these reviews. So we ran them through our AI program to identify emotional language. Here are some common themes we found:

On the whole, customers are pleased with the support and professional attitudes of their Fathom agents. There were some questions of integrity — whether the agent was working in the client’s best interest — and some regrets for having enlisted a Fathom agent before shopping around.

We didn’t give Fathom a 5.0 for customer experience because of several negative reviews and a complaint on the Better Business Bureau. Multiple BBB pages can also get kind of confusing, but might reflect different agencies rather than the entire company. Yet it’s important to remember that people use third-party review sites to complain rather than to offer constructive criticism or praise. Given that, Fathom’s reviews were overwhelmingly positive.

Agent quality

Based on data from RealTrends, we think Fathom Realty agents are very good. For one, the average agent on Realtor.com (we found 67 different profiles) has 10 years of experience, which is higher than the industry median of eight.

Fathom Realty has around 8,100 agents and earns about $1.5 million per agent. Compared with other brokerages, that’s a massive workforce and an impressive amount of sales volume. Its agents close about 4.7 transactions per year, which is very low compared with the industry standard of one per month. (One possible reason for the low number is that Fathom agents aren't counting transactions that they close outside of the company.)

Safe to say, Fathom agents are good at what they do. But that good reputation shouldn’t substitute a thorough interview. Be sure to interview individual agents (ideally two to three) to understand specific sales numbers and years of experience.

Brand reach and visibility

Fathom Realty's main website gets over 15,600 visits every month. In addition, roughly 14,000 people search "Fathom Realty" and other branded terms on Google each month. But neither of these numbers impressed us: for an agency that is completely digital, we'd expect their traffic to be higher.

Its social media pages have more impressive numbers and they have decent PR exposure on RealTrends and other real estate focused publications.

Fathom Realty agent coverage

Service value

Fathom Realty seems like a good deal. Listing with a Fathom agent means getting all the traditional services from a full-service brokerage (MLS listing, pricing assistance, professional photography, staging help, open houses), plus a few extras.

One thing that differentiates Fathom from other brokerages is the list of sale choices. Sellers generally have three ways to sell a home with Fathom:

• Open market (traditional home sale). List your home on the MLS, and your agent will shepherd offers to get the highest sale price possible.
• Fathom Trades (aka, buy-before-you-sell or home trade-in). If you plan to buy and sell a home at the same time, this service helps you first buy a new home then sell your current home.
• Fathom Offers. Sell your home to an iBuyer (someone who will make a cash offer).

Fathom provides buyers with far fewer digital tools and resources than other brokerages. There’s no estimated mortgage calculator, its property locator isn’t intuitive, and it doesn’t offer cash back or rebates.

If you hire a listing agent from Fathom Realty, you should expect to pay fixed commission rates, with no room for negotiation. For a point of comparison, here are the state averages for the markets Fathom Realty operates in:

» MORE: Average Commission Rates Across the U.S. 2022

Additional info about Fathom Realty

General contact info (corporate office)

Fathom doesn't have brick-and-mortar offices. Instead, you can browse agents in your area. Its corporate headquarters still has an office and a phone number that you can call.

Other Fathom Realty services

This review is focused on Fathom Realty's core real estate agent service. We’ve listed its other services and links to their respective websites below.

• Fathom Offers
• Home Estimate

Next steps: Start interviewing agents!

Interview multiple agents (ideally two to three) to ensure you get the best fit and value. Remember: always hire the agent, not the brand. When you’re ready to start searching, check out our guide on how to choose the right real estate agent. Clever’s free agent-matching service makes agent shopping fast and easy, and it can save you money.

Rating methodology

We evaluate brokerages based on four core criteria we think will help readers make informed decisions. We broke those criteria down into discrete metrics so we could make the score as objective as possible. Here’s a quick breakdown of that criteria and methodology: