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The Lone Star State’s Pinnacle Realty Advisors is heading West to the Golden State.
The brokerage-as-a-service company has opened operations in California, according to a statement sent to Inman. Pinnacle doesn’t rely on physical offices, allowing it to build select teams from a wide geographic area. Pinnacle works in both residential and commercial real estate.
Pinnacle is a 100 percent commission model and agents choose among a few monthly subscription levels. Those fees cover access to a number of third-party technology tools under its PinnacleHQ, such as Updater, Chime, Placester, Inspectify and SkySlope for transaction oversight. The company continues to add services and benefits to HQ, which Pinnacle CEO Sam Sawyer likens to Upwork, a marketplace of freelance creative and technology professionals.
Pinnacle was a Texas-based brokerage acquired by Archetape in 2021, which also acquired another Texas company called Broker Breakup. Archetape then rebranded fully into Pinnacle Realty Advisors in 2022.
About the westward expansion, Sawyer said in a statement that his company is looking forward to helping agents in California break away from traditional industry business models.
“We are proud to offer agents a revolutionary platform that unlocks vast opportunities for single agents and teams seeking autonomy over their brand and business,” Sawyer said. “With the growing demand we have experienced, expanding into the California market is a natural progression for us.”
A growth leader has been hired, Michael Locke, a position tantamount to a traditional office broker-in-charge. He worked in account expansion for Side and spent time with HomeLight. His ability to innovate and a progressive mindset overlap well with Pinnacle’s mission, according to Sawyer.
Locke’s first hire is Deniz Kahramaner, who led the Atlasa team, a technology-forward operation based in San Francisco, where Kahramaner’s team was responsible for more than $90M in 2022, resulting in being ranked No. 11 by RealTrends for their market. The entire team will be joining Kahramaner at Pinnacle.
“At Pinnacle, agents are not confined to a ‘one size fits all’ mentality. With their innovative pricing model and a wide array of services tailored to the California market, we have the freedom to run our businesses according to our own vision and preferences,” Kahramaner said in a statement.
Pinnacle is one of several unique real estate companies committed to turning over the traditional way of offering services. While Pinnacle continues to demonstrate success, its colleague in the space Real Brokerage did have a tough 2022, reporting $20 million in losses, Inman reported.
Side, too, another remote brokerage model, has experienced a tough run. The Real Deal reported in February this year that the boutique team builder will have to change financial agreements with some of its offices. In May, an Inman report covered a company restructuring designed to place staffers in the same markets as the brokers and agents with which they work.
Pinnacle seems to be bucking the trend plaguing its alternative-model colleagues. Before California, Pinnacle opened operations in Florida and North Carolina earlier this year.
“Pinnacle Realty Advisors has experienced significant growth, with a growth rate exceeding 60 percent in the past six months alone,” the company said.
Place, another brokerage-as-a-service offering founded by Ben Kinney and Chris Suarez, made news in February of this year when it hired former Homeward executive Brian Gubernick to serve as the company’s chief real estate officer.
Pinnacle also has a presence in Arkansas and Louisiana.
