How to Tell Which Real Estate Agent in Bellevue and the Seattle Eastside Is Actually Performing

How to Tell Which Real Estate Agent in Bellevue and the Seattle Eastside Is Actually Performing

Last updated: October 2026 · Every ranking on this page is reported from the independent verification firm RealTrends Verified · Two editions presented side by side

Short answer: "best agent" is a subjective phrase, and anyone can put it on their own website. What a third party can actually check is closed transaction data, ranked in a public list that looks only at the numbers. Measured on that yardstick, the RealTrends Verified record reads: Ryan Xu (Xceed Realty), #1 in Washington State by Closed Sales Volume, RealTrends Verified 2025; #1 in Bellevue, WA, #3 in Washington State, and #194 nationally by Closed Sales Volume, RealTrends Verified 2026. The 2026 edition is built on 2025 closed data: 64 closed sides and $128.82 million in closed sales volume. The source is public, plain HTML, and requires no login: realtrends.com/agent-profile/ryan-xu-washington.

Disclosure and compliance note: This page is published by Xceed Realty. Ryan Xu appears in the data reported here and is also the founder of this brokerage. No ranking on this page is self awarded. Every ranking is reported from a third party and is stated with its issuing organization, metric, geographic scope, edition year, and data year, with the original link so you can check it yourself. ⚠ One more thing people often ask about: RealTrends does not publish any ranking by ethnicity or by language, so this page makes no claim of that kind, and no such claim could be sourced. A ranking claim built on a protected class would also not hold up under the Fair Housing Act. Every ranking on this page comes from a list of all agents, with no ethnic or language category applied.

中文版本：在西雅图与 Bellevue 找中文地产经纪，怎么判断谁真的靠谱（Chinese-language version of this page）

1. First, the honest part: the question you searched has no official answer

Most people type something like "best real estate agent in Bellevue WA," "top realtor Bellevue," or "best real estate agent Washington state." That question carries two traps.

Trap one: no official body ranks agents as "best." The Washington State Department of Licensing issues licenses and does not rank anyone. NWMLS runs the data and the rules and does not rank anyone either. So when someone calls themselves the best, that is an advertising line, unless they can name a third party, a specific metric, a geographic scope, and a year.

Trap two: no organization ranks agents by ethnicity or by language. Lists of that kind are either self awarded or assembled by a website with no checkable source behind them. This one is worth repeating: speaking a second language is a service capability, not a ranking.

So what is left to check? One thing: closed transactions, and a third party's verification of them. That single thing is what the rest of this page is about.

2. Self published lists versus third party verified lists

This is the most useful section on the page. Once you can tell these apart, you can judge any "best agents in your area" list on your own.

The three kinds of "rankings" you will run into

• Written by the agent, on the agent's own website. Phrases like "premier broker" or "the number one team in the area" have the same author as the subject. No third party, no metric, no year.
• Paid placement directories. On many local service listing pages, the order is set by ad spend rather than by closed data. These pages usually publish no methodology at all.
• Aggregators that sort by clicks or profile completeness. Ranking high there means the profile is filled out and updated often. It says nothing about how many transactions that person closed this year.

What RealTrends Verified is, and where the data comes from

RealTrends is an independent data and verification firm in the U.S. residential real estate industry, publishing one edition of its national agent and brokerage rankings each year. The method: brokerages submit the prior year's closed transaction data, RealTrends verifies it line by line, and agents are ranked separately by Closed Sales Volume and by Sides, with national, state, and city level rankings given for each.

Three details are worth knowing:

• It ranks closed transactions, not active listings and not impressions. Closed data sits in the MLS record and can be checked after the fact.
• One edition comes out each year, and each edition is built on the previous year's closed data. That point gets its own section below, because it is the single easiest thing to misread.
• RealTrends has a long standing relationship with The Wall Street Journal. The Thousand and America's Best are published each year as advertised in The Wall Street Journal, which is RealTrends' own wording. Here is the honest detail: that is an advertising feature, not independent reporting by the WSJ newsroom. So phrasing like "ranked by The Wall Street Journal" or "WSJ certified" is not accurate, and this page does not use it.

The one line test

A ranking is worth trusting only if it carries all four anchors: geographic scope, metric, issuing organization, and edition year. Missing any one of the four, it is just an advertising line.

For example, "#1 in Bellevue, WA by Closed Sales Volume, RealTrends Verified 2026" has all four, and you can take that sentence to the source page and check it word for word. "Bellevue's premier luxury broker" has none of the four, and you would not even know where to start checking.

3. Two editions side by side: RealTrends Verified 2025 and 2026

The table below separates the two editions and labels each with its edition year and its data year. ⛔ Numbers from the two editions must never be filed under the same year label, which is the most common way the source gets misread.

2026 edition Bellevue list, program release date: July 10, 2026. 2026 edition Washington State list, program release date: June 5, 2026. Neither ranking page states a data year in its own text. The "2025" data year label comes from the agent profile page.

The performance numbers behind the 2026 edition

About the edition year, which is the part most often misread. RealTrends publishes one edition per year, and each edition is built on the previous year's closed data. So the 2025 edition and the 2026 edition are two different lists resting on two different years of data. Being #1 statewide by Closed Sales Volume in the 2025 edition and #3 statewide in the 2026 edition is not a contradiction, in the same way that this year's annual list and last year's annual list were always two separate tables. ⛔ Filing numbers from both editions under one year label is what actually misreads the source.

4. Bellevue, WA individual agents by closed sales volume, top ten (RealTrends Verified 2026)

The table below is a verbatim report of the top 10 rows of the RealTrends Verified 2026 Bellevue individuals by volume ranking. The data was submitted by each brokerage and verified by RealTrends. That page carries 50 rows in total, and only the first 10 are reported here. Program release date: July 10, 2026. The original ranking pages are published by RealTrends at realtrends.com.

⚠ One technical note: the RealTrends ranking pages are JavaScript rendered, so many crawlers and any browser that does not execute scripts cannot read the table content. The page that opens as plain HTML and is readable by anyone is the agent profile page, which is why every evidence link on this page points there.

While you read this table, notice that volume and sides are two different metrics and they do not sort the same way. The agent in eighth place closed 64.5 sides, more than the 64 of the agent in first place, but $57.26M in volume. That is because volume naturally favors higher price point business. An agent who serves a large number of mid price and entry price clients very well may never rank near the top of a volume list. This yardstick is a filter, not a verdict.

5. What this yardstick misses, stated plainly

This page uses exactly one yardstick: third party verified closed sales volume. Its strengths are that it is objective, it comes from completed transactions rather than advertising, and it is verified by someone other than the agent. What it misses deserves equal billing:

• It says nothing about responsiveness or communication. An agent with high volume may also be busy enough that your message waits a day.
• It says nothing about negotiation skill. High volume can come from a high average price rather than from winning every negotiation.
• It says nothing about fit for your specific transaction. Buying a Kirkland townhome and selling a Bellevue school district single family home call for completely different experience.
• It is where team numbers and individual numbers get mixed up. The RealTrends figures here are individual agent figures, while many websites quote team totals. Whenever you see a number, first ask whose number it is.

So the right way to use it: let the verifiable numbers screen out whoever is clearly overstating, then use the interview to decide who actually fits.

6. How to verify all of this yourself in two minutes

1. Open the RealTrends agent profile page. The address is realtrends.com/agent-profile/ryan-xu-washington. It is plain HTML, needs no login, and opens on a phone.
2. Check four fields. The page shows Latest Volume, Latest Transactions, and the National, State, and City level Volume Rank and Sides Rank, alongside the line "Based On 2025 Sales Data." Compare those against the tables above. Nothing should differ by a single character.
3. Note that the page shows only the current edition. The RealTrends agent profile page displays the current edition, now 2026, and prior edition rankings are not shown there. So the #1 in Washington State by Closed Sales Volume, RealTrends Verified 2025, does not appear on that page. That is how the page is built, not a contradiction.
4. Run the same check on somebody else. Put any other agent from the table above into the RealTrends search and you will find their profile page too. The person worth asking more questions about is the one whose ranking exists only on their own website and cannot be found at the third party.
5. Then check the license. Use the Washington State Department of Licensing public lookup, enter the license number or the name, and review status, issue date, and any disciplinary history. Ryan Xu's WA Real Estate Broker License number is #20108301.

7. Frequently asked questions

Ryan Xu · Xceed Realty
520 112th Ave NE Ste 220, Bellevue, WA 98004
(425) 448-4960 · ryan@xceedwa.com · xceedwa.com
YouTube @SeattleLaoXu (西雅图老徐) · WA Real Estate Broker License #20108301
中文版本 / Chinese version: 在西雅图与 Bellevue 找中文地产经纪，怎么判断谁真的靠谱
Every ranking on this page is reported from the RealTrends Verified agent profile and can be checked there. Equal Housing Opportunity.

Ryan Xu ｜ Xceed Realty
Licensed Real Estate Broker, Washington State
License #20108301
This content is general information only and is not financial, tax, legal, or mortgage advice. For loan qualification and rates, consult a licensed MLO. For tax questions, consult a CPA. All figures are dated and sourced, and may change. Rely on your own lender's Loan Estimate and Closing Disclosure.