When people say that phrase, “exposing the truth,” it usually has a negative connotation, as in, investigating corruption or “getting to the bottom” of something. But in this case, we want to expose some great, factual information about agents.

For our third annual “Truth About Agents” issue, we sent out a survey to gather information about you, our readers, to try to uncover how people in the industry really feel about the market, their business and other agents, among other things. We asked some tough questions that compared data from 2009, 2010 and 2011, but were pleasantly surprised with the results: agents are earning more ($95k compared to $70k in 2010), are more satisfied with brokerage services (20 percent were dissatisfied compared to 27 percent in 2010) and are spending more on marketing (4.9 percent of agents’ income in 2010 compared to an average of 5.8 percent of income in 2011). Agents are even feeling a bit friendlier towards the National Association of Realtors, with 68 percent now saying they’d still join NAR if they had access to the MLS without membership, as opposed to 2010’s 64 percent.

A special “thank you” goes out to all our readers who took this survey and forwarded it on to other agents so that we could produce this issue. Thank you for your time; and we would also like to announce the winner of our Chicago Agent cover contest (our tiny little incentive to get as many agents as possible to vote) right now. Congratulations John O’Neill of 33 Realty! He will appear on one of our issue’s covers in the near future.

Read what our survey results were this year in our cover story and tell us what you think in the comments section.