The Longleaf Group Named a 2026 RealTrends Verified Top Real Estate Team in Charlotte

I am proud to share some news about our team. The Longleaf Group at eXp Realty has been named a 2026 RealTrends Verified Top Team, an independent, third-party recognition of our sales production in the Charlotte region. For buyers and sellers trying to sort out who to trust, that verification is the whole point: it means our numbers were audited by an outside authority, not self-reported on a billboard. If you have been searching for a top real estate team in Charlotte and wondering how to separate real track records from marketing, this is exactly the kind of proof to look for.

I am Steve Jarrell, the broker who leads The Longleaf Group, and I also hold the eXp Realty ICON Agent designation, awarded each year to fewer than one percent of agents in the eXp network. In this post I want to explain what the RealTrends recognition actually means, what our verified numbers are, and why third-party verification should matter to you whether you are relocating to the area or selling a home you have owned for years.

By Steve Jarrell, The Longleaf Group at eXp Realty | 12 minute read | Published June 2026

What This Guide Covers

• What the RealTrends Verified Top Team Recognition Means
• What Is RealTrends and Why Verification Matters
• The Longleaf Group's Verified 2025 Numbers
• Steve Jarrell, eXp Realty ICON Agent
• The Experience Behind the Numbers
• 130+ Five-Star Reviews From Real Clients
• Why a Verified Top Real Estate Team in Charlotte Matters to You
• Being Clear About What the Award Is and Is Not
• How to Check a Real Estate Team's Track Record Yourself
• What the Verification Means for South Charlotte and Union County
• Frequently Asked Questions

What the RealTrends Verified Top Team Recognition Means

RealTrends Verified named The Longleaf Group a Top Team by Volume for our production, based on 2025 closed sales data. The word that matters in that sentence is verified. RealTrends does not take an agent's word for their numbers. Every transaction submitted is checked against brokerage records before any ranking is published. So when you see The Longleaf Group listed as a top real estate team in Charlotte on our public RealTrends Verified profile, you are looking at audited results, not a self-applied label.

That distinction is bigger than it sounds. The real estate industry is full of awards that an agent can essentially buy or nominate themselves for. A "top agent" banner on a bus stop usually means someone paid for the bus stop. RealTrends Verified sits in a different category, because the recognition is tied to confirmed closings and is published on a public, searchable profile that anyone can pull up. For a consumer, that is the difference between a claim and a receipt.

For our team, earning a spot as a verified top real estate team in Charlotte is not a trophy for the wall. It is a signal to the buyers and sellers we have not met yet that the production behind our marketing is real, current, and checked by someone other than us.

There is also a practical reason this matters more every year. As more home searches start with an online assistant or a quick Google query, the sources that get cited are the ones with structured, verifiable data behind them. A publicly verified profile is exactly the kind of trustworthy signal those systems look for. So being a verified top real estate team in Charlotte is not only reassuring to a human reader, it increasingly shapes which teams even surface when a relocating buyer asks the internet who to call.

What Is RealTrends and Why Verification Matters

RealTrends, now RealTrends Verified, has been ranking and benchmarking the residential real estate industry since 1987. In 2020 it was acquired by HW Media, the parent company of HousingWire, one of the most established names in housing news and data. So this is not a pop-up awards mill. It is a decades-old industry authority that brokerages and lenders treat as a standard reference.

The Thousand and America's Best

RealTrends publishes several national rankings. The most well known is the RealTrends and Tom Ferry The Thousand, advertised in The Wall Street Journal, which lists the top 1,000 agents and teams in the country by volume and by transaction count. Below that sits America's Best Real Estate Professionals, the next tier of high producers who meet strict minimum thresholds, generally at least 40 transactions or $16 million in closed team volume for state and national consideration. These are not participation lists. They have hard production floors.

What "Verified" Actually Means

The verification step is what separates RealTrends from a logo you can order online. When a team submits production, RealTrends confirms the transactions against brokerage and MLS records before anyone is ranked. The result is described by RealTrends as a dual-verified, transparent, public record of sales performance. For a buyer or seller comparing agents, that audited layer is the reason a RealTrends Verified top real estate team in Charlotte carries more weight than a self-reported sales figure on a postcard.

The HW Media connection adds to that credibility. HousingWire is read across the mortgage and real estate industries, and its data products are treated as reference material by professionals who have no reason to flatter any individual agent. When a publisher like that puts its name on a verification, it is staking its own reputation on the accuracy of the numbers. That is precisely the kind of incentive structure you want behind a credential you are using to choose an agent.

The Longleaf Group's Verified 2025 Numbers

Here is what RealTrends verified for our team, based on 2025 closed sales. The Longleaf Group recorded $17.64 million in sales volume across 32 closed transaction sides, with an average home price of $551,200. Those figures earned our RealTrends Verified Top Team by Volume recognition and placed us among the ranked teams in North Carolina by sales volume.

I want to be transparent about what those numbers represent, because transparency is the entire reason verification exists. A "side" is one side of a transaction, a buyer or a seller we represented to closing. Thirty-two verified sides in a single year, at our average price point, reflects a team that is actively closing real business in this market, not coasting on a few headline sales. You can pull our full profile on the RealTrends site and see the same data I am quoting here.

When you evaluate any top real estate team in Charlotte, this is the level of detail you should be able to find. If a team cannot point you to a third-party record of what they actually closed, that absence is its own answer.

It is also worth understanding why volume is a useful measure and not just a vanity number. Every closed side is a full negotiation carried to the finish line under real deadlines, real inspections, and real financing hurdles. A team that does this dozens of times a year builds reflexes a part-time agent simply cannot. So when you choose a verified top real estate team in Charlotte, you are not paying for a logo. You are paying for the judgment that only comes from doing the work repeatedly and recently, which is exactly what the RealTrends number documents.

Steve Jarrell, eXp Realty ICON Agent

Alongside the team recognition, I hold the eXp Realty ICON Agent award. ICON is one of eXp's highest honors, and it is earned, not bought. To qualify, an agent has to hit demanding annual production thresholds and also contribute to the company culture through mentoring, leadership, or community involvement. Fewer than one percent of agents in the entire eXp network earn ICON status in a given year.

I mention it here because it reinforces the same theme as the RealTrends recognition. Both are production-based, both are checked by an outside organization, and both are difficult to fake. When you are choosing a top real estate team in Charlotte, stacking independent credentials like these is a faster way to gauge real performance than reading a hundred self-written bios.

eXp Realty also gives our team national reach and modern technology, while The Longleaf Group provides the local, on-the-ground knowledge of South Charlotte, Weddington, Waxhaw, Matthews, and the Union County towns that relocating buyers ask me about every week. The award says we produce. The local work is how we produce.

The Experience Behind the Numbers

Verified production does not appear by accident, and it helps to know the background that produced it. Before I sold real estate, I spent more than a decade building marketing technology for the industry. My father founded a company called VisualTour in 1999, I led its rebrand to Paradym, and in 2020 the business was acquired by Constellation Software. For ten years I built tools used by thousands of agents across the country, which means I understand the marketing and data side of this business at a level most agents never see.

I hold an MBA from the University of Tennessee in marketing and entrepreneurship, and I have been licensed in both North Carolina and South Carolina since 2021, with a luxury real estate designation. I live in Weddington, my kids go to school here, and this is the community I serve every day. That combination, a marketing-and-data background applied to a market I actually live in, is a big part of how The Longleaf Group became a verified top real estate team in Charlotte in the first place.

I share this not to recite a resume, but because experience is the engine under the recognition. The RealTrends award is the receipt. The years of building, studying, and closing are what earned it.

130+ Five-Star Reviews From Real Clients

Production rankings tell you a team closes business. Reviews tell you what it is like to actually work with them. The Longleaf Group has earned more than 130 five-star Google reviews, and clients consistently rate us five stars on Google and Zillow as well. Those reviews come from buyers and sellers describing the same things over and over: clear communication, straight guidance on the real tradeoffs, and steady hands through the most stressful parts of a move from start to close.

I take the reviews as seriously as the rankings. A top real estate team in Charlotte should be able to show you both halves of the picture, the verified numbers and the verified experience. Anyone can have one good closing. A long wall of five-star reviews from different clients over years is a pattern, and patterns are what you want to bet a home purchase on.

What I appreciate most about our reviews is how specific they are. Clients name the moments that mattered: the late-night call before an offer deadline, the inspection issue we caught, the relocation timeline we kept on track from another state. Those details are the day-to-day reality of working with a top real estate team in Charlotte, and they are the part no ranking can capture. The numbers get you in the door; the experience is why people send their friends and family to us afterward.

Prefer to get a feel for how we think before you call? I share market breakdowns and neighborhood tours for relocating buyers on my Welcome to Charlotte NC channel, including the biggest mistake people make moving to South Charlotte.

Why a Verified Top Real Estate Team in Charlotte Matters to You

If you are relocating from out of state, you are choosing an agent you have likely never met, in a market you do not know yet, often from hundreds of miles away. You cannot lean on a neighbor's recommendation the way a local can. In that situation, independent verification is one of the few signals you can actually trust before you ever get on a plane. A RealTrends Verified top real estate team in Charlotte gives you a checkable starting point.

For Sellers

If you are selling your home, production volume is a direct measure of how often a team is negotiating deals to the finish line in the current market. Pricing, marketing, and negotiation all get sharper with repetition. A verified track record tells you the team you are interviewing is doing this work now, in this market, not citing a peak from several years ago.

For Relocating Buyers

If you are buying a home, especially from out of town, you want a team that knows the difference between Weddington and Waxhaw, between a starter neighborhood and a long-term one, and that has the closing volume to prove it can execute under pressure. Pairing a verified top real estate team in Charlotte with deep local knowledge is the combination that protects an out-of-town buyer from expensive mistakes. It is the same standard I apply when I rank and review agents across our Charlotte relocation guides.

That is the standard I want The Longleaf Group held to. The RealTrends recognition is not the finish line. It is the proof that backs up everything we tell a new client about how we work and what we deliver.

Being Clear About What the Award Is and Is Not

I want to be precise about this recognition, because precision is the whole reason verification has value. RealTrends named The Longleaf Group a Verified Top Team by Volume based on confirmed 2025 closings, and our profile ranks us among North Carolina teams by sales volume. That is a real, audited credential. What it does not mean is that we are the single largest team in the entire metro, and I am not going to claim that, because the value of a verified number is that it is exactly what it says it is.

My view is simple: a top real estate team in Charlotte should be measured by checkable results and repeat client trust, not by who shouts the loudest. The reason I am comfortable putting our numbers, our reviews, and our credentials in one place is that every one of them holds up when you look. If an agent ever quotes you a ranking they cannot link you to, ask why. The good ones will be glad you asked.

Looking ahead, our goal is to keep earning this recognition year after year, because a verification is only as good as how current it is. A team that was busy three years ago and quiet since is not the same as a team producing right now. We intend to keep our profile current, keep our reviews growing, and keep doing the work that makes The Longleaf Group a top real estate team in Charlotte that buyers and sellers can verify for themselves, not just take on faith.

How to Check a Real Estate Team's Track Record Yourself

You do not have to take my word for any of this, and you should not take any agent's word for their production without checking. Here is the exact process I would use to vet any top real estate team in Charlotte, including mine, if I were the one hiring.

1. Look for Independent, Third-Party Verification

Start by asking whether a team's production is verified by an outside organization like RealTrends, and ask for the link to the public profile. A verified profile lives on the verifying organization's own website, not on the agent's site, so it cannot be quietly edited. If a team points you to a RealTrends Verified page, you are looking at audited closings. If the only proof is a graphic on their own homepage, treat it as marketing until proven otherwise.

2. Ask for Real Production Numbers

A serious team can tell you, without hesitation, how many homes they closed last year and their total volume. Vague answers like "we are one of the busiest teams around" are a flag. Specific, checkable answers are a green light. A genuine top real estate team in Charlotte should be comfortable handing you the same numbers we publish here: sides closed, total volume, and average price.

3. Read the Reviews Across More Than One Platform

Look at Google, Zillow, and Facebook, not just the testimonials hand-picked for a website. You are looking for volume, recency, and consistency. A handful of reviews from years ago is not the same as a steady stream of recent five-star reviews from different clients. Cross-platform consistency is hard to fake, which is why it is one of the most reliable signals you have.

Run those three checks on any agent you are considering. The goal is not to be cynical, it is to make sure the team you trust with the largest transaction of your life has a record that holds up when you actually look at it.

What the Verification Means for South Charlotte and Union County

Our work is concentrated in South Charlotte and the Union County towns just south and east of the city: Weddington, Waxhaw, Marvin, Matthews, Indian Trail, and the surrounding communities. These are the markets relocating buyers ask me about constantly, and they each behave a little differently on price, inventory, and pace.

Being a verified top real estate team in Charlotte in these specific submarkets matters because local nuance is where deals are won or lost. Knowing that Weddington and Waxhaw draw different buyers, that a particular subdivision sits in a stronger school zone, or that a street floods in heavy rain is the kind of knowledge that does not show up in a national ranking but absolutely shows up in your results. The verified volume proves we are active here; the local depth is how we put that activity to work for you.

It also means our pricing and negotiation are calibrated to current conditions, not last year's market. When a team closes regularly across a region, it develops a real-time read on what is actually selling, how fast, and at what concessions. For a seller setting a list price or a buyer deciding how hard to push on an offer, that current, repetition-built judgment is worth a great deal.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does RealTrends Verified mean?

RealTrends Verified means a real estate agent or team submitted their sales production to RealTrends, an independent industry authority founded in 1987 and now part of HW Media, which audited those transactions against brokerage records before publishing any ranking. It is third-party confirmation of production, not a self-reported claim.

Is The Longleaf Group really a top real estate team in Charlotte?

The Longleaf Group was named a 2026 RealTrends Verified Top Team by Volume based on 2025 closed sales of $17.64 million across 32 transaction sides, and ranks among North Carolina teams by verified sales volume. You can view the full verified profile directly on the RealTrends website.

What is an eXp Realty ICON Agent?

The eXp Realty ICON Agent award is one of eXp's highest honors, earned by hitting demanding annual production thresholds and contributing to company culture through mentoring, leadership, or community service. Fewer than one percent of eXp agents earn ICON status in a given year. Steve Jarrell holds the ICON designation.

How many reviews does The Longleaf Group have?

The Longleaf Group has earned more than 130 five-star Google reviews and is consistently rated five stars on Google and Zillow by past buyers and sellers.

Why does third-party verification matter when choosing an agent?

Many real estate awards can be nominated or paid for. Third-party verification, like RealTrends Verified, ties recognition to confirmed closings checked by an outside organization. For a buyer or seller, that is the difference between a marketing claim and an audited track record you can actually check.

How do I work with The Longleaf Group?

You can call Steve Jarrell at 704-774-7170, email steve@jarrellhomes.com, or book a free intro call through thelongleafgroup.com. The team serves South Charlotte, Weddington, Waxhaw, Matthews, and the surrounding Union County area for both buyers and sellers.

About the Author

Steve Jarrell leads The Longleaf Group at eXp Realty, a 2026 RealTrends Verified Top Team and one of the recognized top real estate team names in Charlotte's southern suburbs. He is an eXp Realty ICON Agent, lives in Weddington, and works daily with relocating buyers and local sellers across South Charlotte and Union County. His goal on every move is simple: deliver the kind of result that earns both a verified number and a five-star review. Reach Steve at 704-774-7170 or steve@jarrellhomes.com, or learn more at thelongleafgroup.com.