One of Arizona’s largest real estate brokerages, Phoenix-based John Hall & Associates, has been acquired by Las Vegas-based Realty One Group Inc., a company started at the height of the boom that now claims to be the fastest-growing brokerage in the Southwest.
Jim Sexton, managing broker of John Hall & Associates, said he and core John Hall & Associates managers and support staff from all offices will stay on after the acquisition, including brokers Marge Lindsay and Toni Row.
According to the company’s website, John Hall founded the 549-agent brokerage in 1974, and it was acquired by the Sexton family in 1994.
Founded in 2005, Realty One Group claimed 2,552 agents — 1,446 in Nevada, 730 in Arizona and 376 in California — before the acquisition.
Real Trends ranked Realty One Group as the 13th largest in the nation last year by closed transaction sides, although the company did not rank among the top 25 in dollar volume of closed sales.
In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun last year, Realty One Group founder and CEO Kuba Jewgieniew said he knew about 20 of his agents personally — the former stockbroker and computer programmer said his main role was crunching numbers and growing the business.
He said the brokerage has attracted agents by charging experienced agents a per-transaction flat fee instead of a commission split.
On his personal blog, Jewgieniew said that when he first studied the franchise system, "I quickly noticed that these well-known real estate brokerages weren’t evolving with the times … many of the national branded franchise firms were ‘individually owned and operated’ and most ran it like a traditional mom-and-pop shop. They weren’t embracing technology, which is my background."
In a video posted on the company’s website, Sexton said, "For the past couple of years I’ve been searching for what John Hall needs in order to compete for agents in the marketplace.
"Here’s what I’ve figured: I need better technology; I need better systems; I need more modern offices and more modern conference rooms so agents can bring buyers and sellers in and sit them down and show them contracts, make presentations, and show them properties. These needs are met with the acquisition by Realty One Group."