Keller Williams on Thursday announced its agents set quarterly sales records in the third quarter, a sign that the hot housing market continued to burn brightly despite, or because of, the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the company’s more than 160,000 agents, the third quarter of 2020 was particularly strong, with President Josh Team reporting that the company outpaced industry averages.
Josh Team | Photo credit: Keller Williams
“Our agents experienced their most productive quarter ever in Q3,” Team, who took over the duties and responsibilities held by Gary Keller last month, said in a statement.
“It’s inspiring to see Keller Williams agents capture a massive amount of new business through channels like Command and Facebook social ads,” Team added. “Then, they are converting that new business and helping clients buy and sell safely at a pace that is simply unprecedented.”
Agents affiliated with the nation’s largest franchise brand closed 374,824 transactions in the third quarter, an increase of 16 percent over the third quarter of 2019 — which Gary Keller previously claimed, “was the most impressive quarter we’ve experienced in the 36-year history of our company.”
The company’s agents in the U.S. and Canada closed $127.5 billion in sales volume in the third quarter, an increase of 25.4 percent year over year. Agents took on 5.2 percent more new listings year over year, too, in a welcome sign that more homes are hitting an inventory-starved market.
For comparison, the National Association of Realtors reported closed transactions across the U.S. were up 12.8 percent and sales volume was up 22.7 percent year over year.
“We are excited to again report our agents have outpaced our industry in terms of those key performance indicators,” Team said.
Although the move technically took place one week into the fourth quarter, the biggest news from the Austin-headquartered company in recent weeks was the massive leadership shuffle that saw the creation of a new parent holding company, KWx.
Keller vacated the CEO position as part of a leadership shuffle that repositioned him as executive chairman of the new company and former AutoNation President Carl Liebert as the CEO of KWx. Team took over Keller’s duties with the franchisor.
Keller Williams added roughly 4,000 more agents in the quarter, bringing its U.S. and Canada agent count to 161,885 agents, likely a welcome sign for a company that’s struggled with its agent count over the past two years.
On the technology adoption front, Keller Williams’ proprietary customer relationship management tool (CRM) had 143,104 active users as of September 30. Active users are up 7.3 percent from the previous quarter.
One area where the company is failing to capture the hot housing market demand is in its proprietary home search app. While 120.8 million searches were conducted across the KW app, KW.com and market center and agent websites in the third quarter, that number is actually 0.9 percent lower than the second quarter of 2020, when sales were down.
At the end of the third quarter, Keller Williams hosted its first fully digital Mega Camp event, the company’s annual training and technology conference. More than 34,000 agents attended the event. The company also had more than 47,000 attendees for its BOLD Pivot coaching offering.
“Keller Williams agents are committed to delivering an unmatched client experience no matter the market,” Team said. “They are doing that by staying learning-based.”
“I’m proud to see our agents not just committing to coaching and training, but learning from each other through digital events like BOLD Pivot and Mega Camp,” Team added. “Thousands of our agents are sharing their best practices, strategies and wins and helping each other succeed.”
Outside of the U.S. and Canada, Keller Williams World Wide saw transaction volume increase 47.4 percent and sales volume increase 54.9 percent year over year. The company ended the quarter with 11,442 international agents.
