Agent turnover is a hidden cost in real estate that most teams avoid discussing publicly. But Justin Nimergood, who leads Top Gun Team in Southlake, TX, addresses it directly. Since founding the team, he says he has not lost a single agent, and he aims to make retention—not recruiting—the team’s defining metric.
Most real estate commission structures are built around production: the more an agent closes, the better their split. Nimergood structured Top Gun Team’s splits differently. Newer agents pay a standard share upfront, but agents who stay for two, five, and ten years see their splits improve based on tenure, regardless of production changes. His reasoning is straightforward: a production-only split rewards agents for leaving when a better deal appears elsewhere, while a tenure-based component gives them a reason to stay even if a marginally better production split is available.
Nimergood is careful about framing his zero-turnover record. He does not expect it to last forever, and he distinguishes between acceptable turnover—such as an agent relocating out of state or country—and turnover tied to team culture or benefits, which he considers his responsibility to fix. So far, he says, no departures have fallen into that second category because there have been no departures at all. He wants agent retention to be the team’s leading differentiator in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, ahead of production numbers or growth speed. His goal is for Top Gun Team to become synonymous with keeping agents long-term, not just recruiting them.
Another detail Nimergood emphasizes is the language in his agent agreements. Every agent who joins signs what he calls a lifetime partnership agreement—a term he says is unusual in an industry where most agreements run six months to a year or carry no specific term. He is precise about the distinction: it is not a lifetime employment contract. It is framed as a partnership because he considers every agent a business partner rather than an employee. The word “lifetime” is intentional, he says, to encourage agents to think past a short-term stint and toward what their career could look like if this became the last team they ever needed to join.
When asked about his legacy, Nimergood does not point to sales volume. He wants to help create multiple millionaires among his agents, believing that agents who reach that level of success take on bigger roles and more responsibility across the industry. He has seen agents use the financial stability they build at Top Gun Team to help others, and he hopes that ripple effect becomes part of the team’s lasting legacy.
For agents evaluating teams in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the retention record and the lifetime partnership language are two concrete signals worth weighing against the more common, production-only split structures found elsewhere. More information is available at TopGunTeam.org.
