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Real estate franchising giant RE/MAX’s Motto Mortgage business has seen its open office count shrink to levels last seen in 2022 following four consecutive quarters of declines, the company revealed Wednesday.
There were 225 Motto Mortgage offices doing business at the end of the year, down 8 percent from a year ago when the open office count peaked at 246, parent company RE/MAX Holdings Inc. reported in a Jan. 8 regulatory filing.
Motto Mortgage office count
Source: RE/MAX Holdings regulatory filings.
Motto Mortgage doesn’t make loans itself but provides technology, training and marketing tools to franchisors. Each Motto Mortgage franchise is independently owned, operated and licensed by mortgage brokers who work with wholesale lenders like UWM, the nation’s biggest mortgage lender.
Franchisees sign seven-year agreements directly with Motto Franchising; 2024 was the first full year the company has had offices come up for renewal.
Erik Carlson
Franchise sales have slowed and a few existing franchises have terminated “due to their financial position, lack of transaction activity or not being connected to the real estate transaction,” RE/MAX CEO Erik Carlson said on the company’s Nov. 1 earnings call.
“While Motto has seen some of those terminations increase during the past year as the macro economy changes, we do believe we’ll be able to start growing that open office count again soon,” Carlson said.
Carlson said September was the best month of Motto franchise sales since March of 2023 and that RE/MAX subsidiary wemlo, which provides third-party loan processing services to mortgage brokers, also had its best month of the year.
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