David Hoffman, the CEO and founder of the most productive team-owned brokerage in North Carolina is leaving Keller Williams to launch a full-service indie brokerage in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Hoffman previously ran one of Keller Williams’ top expansion groups, with more than 25 offices nationally. But he started to feel that wide focus caused him to take his eye off his own local market of Charlotte, so in the past year, he switched his focus back to his own area.
“This past year or so, we’ve really been focusing in our backyard,” Hoffman said. “We went from one of the biggest expansion groups around the country to the last year, I went local.”
In focusing locally, Hoffman launched a mortgage company in the past year. In 2019, The David Hoffman Group topped the Real Trends Thousand for team-owned brokerages in North Carolina. In 2020, his team of 30 agents is currently on pace to close $130 million in sales.
He believes that local focus is what allowed his team to succeed even with the headwinds of COVID-19. When he announced the move from Keller Williams to indie broker, Hoffman said 100 percent of the agents and staff decided to join with him.
“My real estate group has had zero attrition, the entire year,” Hoffman said. “We gave everyone commission bumps, we gave all our w2 staff raises and we’ve hired half a dozen more employees during the pandemic.”
“During the pandemic, instead of contracting, we’re actually opening divisions and expanding and hiring.”
Hoffman told Inman he’s going to build the brokerage on the foundation of culture, with more focus on the relationship outside the transaction than the actual transaction itself. The company will launch with an affiliated mortgage company and new homes and luxury division, and Hoffman plans on adding a title and insurance company and nonprofit in the next one to two years.
Hoffman hopes to grow the brokerage by an agent a week, with a recruitment-to-revenue sharing program he said is like a combination of what Keller Williams and eXp Realty offer to agents.
Prior to affiliating with Keller Williams, Hoffman was part of the Allen Tate Realtors family. In conversation with Inman, he named both Keller Williams co-founder and CEO Gary Keller, and the late Allen Tate founder H. Allen Tate, as mentors.
“I’ve learned so much from [Gary Keller] on the growth side and I learned so much from Allen Tate on the community service side,” Hoffman said. “What I hope is that [Keller] will look at us and be proud.”
