A high-performing RE/MAX team in the Washington, D.C., area has jumped ship for eXp Realty, becoming the latest in a growing string of personnel wins for the fast-growing virtual brokerage.
The Lahey Group includes 21 agents who work in Maryland and Virginia, as well as the U.S. capital. Jonathan Lahey founded the team more than a decade ago and told Inman he is grateful for the years he spent with RE/MAX. However, his goal is to expand the team beyond its current markets and at RE/MAX that would require buying franchises in new locations.
“EXp didn’t have those limitations,” he said. “I didn’t have to buy an eXp franchise.”
Lahey, bottom center, with other members of his team. Credit: The Lahey Group
Lahey said that up until a few months ago he was skeptical of eXp, thinking the company’s business model was not necessarily sustainable. As a result, he rejected repeated recruitment attempts from other agents.
Over time, however, Lahey began to notice that teams he looked up to were leaving other brokerages, or abandoning their independent status.
“One by one they started moving to eXp,” Lahey said. “These are people who are my peers or who I look up to. I started thinking maybe I missed something.”
The final straw came when a solo agent Lahey knows told him she had made $4 million via eXp’s revenue sharing program.
“My jaw dropped,” Lahey said.
Soon he was questioning the agents on his team about moving. He told Inman he kind of secretly hoped they’d push back and reject moving, but instead “one by one every single one of my agents was like, ‘let’s do this.'”
Lahey made the move official April 1, the same week that a high-profile Keller Williams team also joined eXp. EXp also picked up major teams in February and in October.
In the case of the Lahey Group, the team described itself in a statement Tuesday as “the highest-ranking residential owner team in Maryland, as well as the 24th nationally in their franchise” in 2020.
With the move now complete, Lahey said he is looking forward to “changing people’s lives through real estate.” And he added that with eXp the team isn’t tied to one particular place.
“We can,” he said, “go help change agents’ lives anywhere.”
