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A souring real estate market dinged Keller Williams last year, sending transactions and sales volume down compared to 2021, though the company did still manage to increase its agent count.
In total, Keller Williams agents inked 1.1 million transactions in 2022, according to an earnings report the company published Monday. That’s an 18.2 percent drop from the 1.3 million transactions Keller Williams reported having in 2021.
Also in 2022, the company’s agents closed a total of $472.9 billion in sales volume, down 12.5 percent compared to the $532.2 billion in volume Keller Williams agents did in 2021.
Keller Williams is not a publicly traded company, and therefore not subject to the same financial reporting rules that apply to firms — such as Anywhere, Compass, RE/MAX and others — that do trade shares on the stock market. The company does release quarterly earnings reports, but those reports do not include metrics such as revenue and net profits or losses, which are key parts of the reports from publicly traded enterprises.
Marc King
In Monday’s report, Keller Williams President Marc King acknowledged the tougher market conditions that led to declining transactions and sale volume, saying that “closing out 2022, it’s clear that taking a new listing is harder than ever.”
“To that end, we’re singularly focused on enabling our agents through training, coaching, masterminding, modeling, technology, and more to charge the storm and position their businesses to continue to grow over time, no matter the market,” King continued.
Though transactions and volume were down in 2022, Keller Williams ended the year with 191,877 agents — a 2 percent jump compared to the end of 2021. The vast majority of that growth happened overseas, where the company upped its agent count by more than 3,000. In the U.S. and Canada, Keller Williams ended 2022 with 745 more agents than it had in 2021.
Gary Keller, the company’s executive chairman, on Monday touted the rising number of agents.
Gary Keller
“In our 40th year of business, we continued to grow our agent count,” he said in the report. “As a company, we are well-positioned as the place for entrepreneurs to thrive.”
In total, agents outside the U.S. and Canada closed 77,800 deals in 2022 and did $15.7 billion in volume.
The company did not break out its fourth quarter earnings from its 2022 totals in the report provided to Inman Monday. However, a previous report from the company stated that it closed 884,500 transactions between the beginning of January and the end of September last year. Subtracting that number from the 2022 total means Keller Williams agents did about 215,500 deals in the final three months of the year.
That’s down about 35.1 percent compared to the 331,900 deals Keller Williams agents did in the final quarter of 2021.
Keller Williams’ report Monday arrived at the tail end of a rough earnings season for real estate companies. Thanks to rising mortgage rates and consequently slowing home sales, companies including Anywhere, Compass, Opendoor and many others reported massive losses in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Many publicly traded real estate companies have also seen their share prices decline significantly over the last two years. Some experienced a small rebound last month, but in many cases those gains are now fading away as well.
In the past, Keller Williams was the subject of intense speculation over a possible initial public offering. But the company has never publicly confirmed its plans one way or another, and over time speculation on the issue has grown less feverish. The fact that many real estate companies have conspicuously underperformed the broader market over the last two years could also be weighing on Keller Williams’ plans, though again the franchisor has not outlined any strategy or executive thinking on the topic.
In the report, King further acknowledged the tough market conditions last year by suggesting a better way to understand the company’s 2022 numbers was to compare them to those of 2019 rather than 2021. In 2019, King pointed out, the market was “not influenced by historically low mortgage rates and COVID-19 economic conditions.”
“Compared to 2019, across the U.S. and Canada, our agent count and sales volume jumped 9.2 percent and 34.7 percent, respectively,” King said in the statement.
Either way, though, King also struck an optimistic tone in the report when referencing the future.
“Looking ahead,” he concluded, “we are pleased with our long-term growth path as our agent partners move to take additional market share through the market shift — as we have throughout our history.”
