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Nearly two years after recruiting former Remine co-founder Leo Pareja, eXp Realty announced on Friday that it has promoted the executive to serve as CEO.
Leo Pareja
EXp first hired Pareja in June 2022 to serve as the president of affiliated services, then promoted him to chief strategy officer six months later. His latest promotion to the chief executive chair will see him take the reins from company founder Glenn Sanford. According to a statement, Sanford “will now fully dedicate his efforts to his position as founder, chairman, and CEO of eXp World Holdings,” the parent company of eXp Realty.
Sanford praised Pareja in the statement, saying his “innovative and recognized industry leadership has elevated our agent-value proposition by reshaping referrals and lead-generation.”
“His deep industry experience and influence on our community have been profound, and I trust that under his direction, eXp Realty will further fortify its competitive advantage and deliver unparalleled value to our agents, further cementing our position as a ground-breaking leader in the real estate industry,” Sanford continued.
Glenn Sanford
The statement adds that Pareja has “over two decades of real estate experience.” According to his Linkedin Page, he got his start as a Keller Williams agent in 2002.
EXp’s statement praised Pareja’s recent track record at the virtual brokerage. Friday’s statement notes that Pareja was “instrumental in solidifying eXp Realty’s standing in the competitive real estate marketplace,” adding that his leadership “greatly enriched the company’s value proposition to its agents.”
Pareja steps into the CEO job at a time of significant change for the real estate industry. Most notably, a series of lawsuits over commissions have threatened to upend how agents get paid. The lawsuits — which have named as defendants a slew of major industry players, including in some cases eXp — led to a proposed settlement between the plaintiffs and the National Association of Realtors last month, though the settlement has only amplified speculation that major changes are coming to the industry.
At the same time, high mortgage rates over the last two years have slowed transactions and, eventually, reduced Realtor ranks. Perhaps not coincidentally, eXp’s once-rapid agent count growth has also slowed, and in the most recent quarter actually shrank, though the company remains bullish about long-term growth.
This tumult has served as a backdrop for several other high profile leadership shakeups. In February, RE/MAX CEO Nick Bailey left that company as revenue continued to fall. Less than a month later, Keller Williams President Marc King also stepped down. Those two departures came about 14 months after Coldwell Banker CEO M. Ryan Gorman also stepped down. The departures added to — and highlighted the costs of — the recent chaos in the housing business.
While commission lawsuits, resignations and a slow market are broad industry trends, eXp is also currently enmeshed in an ongoing legal struggle stemming from alleged sexual assault on the part of two now-former eXp agents.
Prior to joining eXp, Pareja was recognized in the industry as the co-founder and former CEO of Remine, which provides public data, search tools and transaction management to multiple listing services and Realtor associations. The company experienced a rocky period in the early 2020s, with financial challenges, dropping personnel rolls, and an allegedly toxic work environment all making headlines. In 2021, a group of MLSs came together to buy the company, which later prompted a lawsuit from investors. Pareja left Remine in May 2022.
This week, he expressed optimism about the future, saying in the statement he is “honored to lead a company that has always placed innovation and agent success at the forefront of its mission.”
“Together, we will not only continue to redefine the real estate landscape through technology and unparalleled agent support,” he concluded, “but also empower every member of our community to achieve their full potential.”
