The real estate market has seen tremendous ups and downs in the last few years—wildly fluctuating interest rates and evolving pandemic buying and selling trends to name just a few. But eXp Realty, with its completely virtual model and industry-disrupting compensation plan, has not only weathered those hills and valleys, but thrived throughout them.
At the recent Global Celebration, eXp was honored with its third consecutive Bravo Growth Award for domestic service-based companies, given to the direct sales service-based company with the highest year-over-year growth percentage. This publicly traded real estate company grew from $3.8 billion to $4.6 billion in 2022, adding another $800 million last year to achieve 21 percent year-over-year growth. With over 85,000 independent agents worldwide, eXp Realty is positioned for yet another year of stellar growth.
Breaking the Mold
Glenn Sanford, Founder & CEO of eXp, upended the real estate industry in 2009 when he launched eXp Realty, a completely virtual brokerage offering agents a new way to do business from anywhere. As an agent himself in a traditional real estate agency in the early 2000s, Sanford had experienced the frustrations and limitations of agency life—desk and franchise fees that he had no control over and an income level that didn’t seem to budge no matter how many millions in deals he brought in.
The industry was ready for a remodel. In direct contrast to the way things had always been done, his new company would empower agents to build wealth through multiple levers, including commission, revenue share and stock offerings. Agents would be treated more like shareholders with equity in the company and an 80/20 commission split. The remodel was a risk that continues to pay off for Sanford and his team and the tens of thousands of agents worldwide.
“In 2009, we successfully launched the cloud-based, agent-centric brokerage model, which is now the model for many newer brokerage firms across the industry. As we iterate on the agent value proposition, our focus is to modernize our infrastructure for the next generation of real estate agents,” Sanford explained. “Our cloud-based model and solid financial foundation enable us to continue investing in synergistic products and technologies that lay the groundwork for the future, while delivering an enhanced agent experience today.”
eXp Realty went public in 2013; reached 10,000 agents five years later; expanded internationally in 2019; and ended 2022 with over 85,000 agents and 24 global locations. While the company’s momentum is staggering and shows no signs of abating, Sanford and his team have built an infrastructure and leadership lineup to comfortably handle this kind of explosive growth.
“Since late 2018, we’ve really upgraded our team and stayed ahead of the growth,” Sanford said. “We had to really invent our way to scale because no one had really scaled this fast in the history of real estate. Any system built pre-eXp was not designed to scale as fast as we scaled.”
Bright Future Ahead
The company’s 2023 looks to be just as exciting, with solid Q1 financial results, a recent partnership with Realty.com and new leadership team and Board of Directors appointments. But the company’s growth continues to be built on the power of its agency-focused business model. Staying true to its original industry-redefining vision, eXp announced its 2022 revenue share and agent equity payout figures this spring. According to the company, eXp distributed more profit/revenue share benefits last year to agents and brokers than any other real estate brokerage model or platform—increasing revenue share to agents 20 percent to $202 million in 2022.
“When eXp Realty was founded, we set out to build the most agent-centric brokerage that solved the biggest pain point in real estate for agents,” shared Sanford. “Historically, agents were generally not offered meaningful ownership in the brokerages they were part of and the profit/revenue sharing models didn’t provide a viable path to potential retirement for the vast majority of agents. Our model and core business has proven to be sustainable in both good and bad markets. More importantly, it proves that we are delivering on the promise we made to agents when eXp was founded in 2009. By building the most agent-centric real estate brokerage on the planet, we continue to grow, improving the lives of agents around the world.”
DSN congratulates Glenn Sanford and the entire eXp team on their third consecutive Bravo Growth Award.
From the June 2023 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.
