Introduction
Brokerages offer administrative, operational, marketing, technology, legal and branding and training services to real estate agents who hang their license with them. Agents typically interact directly with consumers to buy and sell homes. Consumers usually recognize brokerages as a corporate or umbrella brand on shopfronts, For Sale signs, websites and legal contracts.
A residential real estate brokerage is a company – usually an incorporated firm, a limited liability firm or a sole proprietorship – licensed to sell real estate in the U.S. For the Mega 1000’s purposes, a brokerage company’s numbers include subsidiaries in which the larger company owns a controlling stake.
For example, the nation’s third largest brokerage, HomeServices of America, owns and operates approximately two dozen regional or local brands, such as Edina Realty, Long and Foster Real Estate, Intero Real Estate and Ebby Halliday Realtors. The annual sales volumes of these brokerages, and others within the HomeServices of America stable, roll up to HomeServices of America because the umbrella company owns more than 50 percent of each of those brokerages. Realogy Brokerage Group, itself a subsidiary of the Realogy Holdings Corp. enterprise, has a similar situation; it owns numerous regional Coldwell Banker-branded companies as well as some companies under other brands such as Corcoran Group.
Some brokerages stand alone or operate under a single entity or brand such as Redfin, Compass and eXp Realty. Brokerages may or may not be affiliated with a franchise brand. Examples of large franchise brands include RE/MAX, Keller Williams Realty and Coldwell Banker. Brokerages not affiliated with franchises are often referred to as independents. Some brokerages, particularly the larger independents hold membership in, or are affiliated with, a real estate network such as The Realty Alliance, Leading Real Estate Companies of the World or Christie’s International Real Estate.
Methodology
Gathering and analyzing brokerage company data in the Mega 1000 is a rigorous, multistep process. It starts by sending requests for information to the nation’s largest brokerages. T3 Sixty researches approximately 2,500 real estate brokerages, all real estate franchisors, all real estate enterprises and a selection of large real estate networks.
All told, T3 Sixty annually collects and analyzes over 12,000 data points to develop the Mega 1000. After examining the data, running algorithms to identify outliers, and testing the gathered information against T3 Sixty parameters and benchmarks, the list is built. This is a huge undertaking; T3 Sixty strives to verify data before using it to sort and rank brokerages to ensure that rankings are as comprehensive as possible, as every company not included destroys the integrity of the rankings below that entry.
It is nearly impossible to identify every brokerage that should be included; that said, T3 Sixty has worked persistently to include everyone it is aware of by diligently reaching out to franchisors, networks, organized real estate organizations, all available lists, the media and so on to find as many as possible. If T3 Sixty inadvertently missed a brokerage, please send an email to research@t360.com and that information will be included in the next research cycle.
Brokerage Landscape
The 2023 Mega 1000 reveals that for the first time half of the brokerages in the top 20 by sales volume were founded after the year 2000.
Douglas Elliman Realty entered the top five by sales volume, Peerage Realty Partners moved from No. 13 to No. 8, Fathom Realty moved from No. 20 to No. 15, and United Real Estate moved from No. 16 to No. 12. The Real Brokerage, entering the top 20 of the Mega 1000 for the first time in 2023, is ranked No. 18.
Brokerages in the Mega 1000 captured 58.8 percent of national sales volume of just over $4 trillion in 2022. This is lower than the 59.3 percent market share in 2021 when national sales volume topped $4.5 trillion. The top 100 brokerages did somewhat better with a 37.5 percent share of national sales volume compared with 36.9 percent in 2021.
The share of transaction sides completed by Mega 1000 brokerages rose slightly to 45 percent from 44.3 percent in 2021. Nationally, the number of transaction sides fell 17.8 percent while the number of transaction sides among the Mega 1000 was down by 16.4 percent to 4,528,233
