Cloud brokerage eXp Realty has scored a coup this week, signing up well-known Arizona-based Keller Williams expansion team Group 46:10 Network, a multiple state team of nearly 50 agents and one of Gary Keller’s first “pirate” expansion teams since 2014, though founded in 2008.
Kevin Kauffman and Fred Weaver
Group 46:10 Network, lead by co-founders Fred Weaver and Kevin Kauffman, a tech-led and training-focused real estate company, tallied $150 million in sales volume last year, with a total of 552 transactions. Group 46:10, which was ranked no. 66 team in the country by Real Trends last year, serves clients in Phoenix, Tucson and Yuma, Arizona; Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado; San Luis Obispo, in California; and Nashville, Tennessee.
Kauffman said of Glenn Sanford, eXp Realty’s founder: “He has really been trying to solve a lot of the problems we had been trying to solve — he embraced the expansion idea and the idea of doing things new and differently.”
EXp Realty seems to have been designed with expansion teams in mind, Kauffman said.
“Group 46:10 has chosen to partner with eXp so we can to sell more real estate, which in turn, will help us grow a bigger network of real estate professionals, which allows us to interact and serve more in the community, ” he explained.
Kauffman and Weaver have been impressed by the recent uplisting to Nasdaq by eXp World Holdings in May, the parent company of eXp Realty, they told Inman.
“The Nasdaq listing was a huge win for them as a company, it really starts to validate what they are doing,” Kauffman said.
The cloud brokerage has a revenue sharing arrangement with its agents, they receive a percentage of the gross commission income earned by agents they bring into the company, and they receive equity based on their production and contribution to the company.
Weaver added, “The company is beginning to attract a lot more high-profile agents who have sizable businesses. I think with any company the value has a lot to do with the people who are in it, and eXp has more and more top agents and teams who are influential people in the industry.”
The Group 46:10 Network has been sponsored in its move to the cloud brokerage by high-profile Phoenix-based eXp team leader, Curtis Johnson, who has brought on 300 agents to the cloud brokerage since The Curtis Johnson Team — 22 agents — joined in January this year from Revelation Real Estate.
Why are teams attracted to eXp Realty? Johnson, who was with Keller Williams from 2003 to 2005 before launching on his own, said: “With eXp being one national brokerage, we have one [commission] cap instead of paying each market center and franchiser in each area. One of the many things that attracted us to Keller Williams 15 years ago was the opportunity for ownership and regions. Those opportunities have really dried up, and so many of the most entrepreneurial agents are attracted to the idea of essentially being able to grow without boundaries or having to deal with a different owner in each location.”
Johnson said he had been hoping to partner with Weaver and Kauffman, who run a private Facebook group with “23,000 of the most influential agents in the business,” for years.
Weaver and Kauffman intend expanding further geographically under eXp when they find the right people, and they expect their business be a blend of brick-and-mortar and virtual. The team owns its own building in Tempe, Arizona, which will remain the hub for Group 46:10 Network. Weaver and Kauffman are also expecting to sponsor other agents and teams coming to eXp in the near future.
