

Founder and CEO
eXp World Holdings
Bellingham, WA
SP 200 Ranking
Last updated January 14, 2026
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Founder and CEO, eXp World Holdings
Bellingham, WA
4
SP 200 Ranking
Sanford, the largest individual shareholder in eXp World Holdings, parent company of eXp Realty, continues to prove his strength as an effective visionary and guide for one of the industry’s most innovative brokerage companies. The cloud-based, platform approach to brokerage that Sanford helped introduce in 2009 has become a significant industry trend.
The company has leveraged an office-less model anchored by agent revenue-sharing and equity grants to achieve staggering organic growth, propelling eXp Realty to its status as the nation’s largest brokerage by annual transaction sides (with over 350,000), and the third-largest by sales volume — a feat that has inspired a legion of similar, fast-growing brokerages.
With Compass’s acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate, eXp Realty — which delivers most of eXp World Holdings’ revenue — becomes the nation’s second-largest brokerage and an even more prominent player on the national stage.
Sanford’s national brokerage platform continued to hum in 2025. Notable achievements included:
Sanford has also found a dynamic leader in eXp Realty CEO Leo Pareja, who confidently oversees day-to-day brokerage operations, allowing Sanford to focus on developing a broader platform vision for the company as he works with other divisions of the eXp World Holdings enterprise, including its virtual meeting system FrameVR.io and its personal development business Success Enterprises, of which Sanford became publisher and managing editor in 2025.
Sanford has remained a vocal industry leader, using his influence to push his tech-enabled, scalable model forward while diversifying the firm and advocating for AI. For these accomplishments and eXp Realty’s significant position and dominance, Sanford is the industry’s fourth most powerful leader.
| Ranking Year | Rank |
|---|---|
| 2026 | 4 |
| 2025 | 2 |
| 2024 | 4 |
| 2023 | 3 |