It looks like RE/MAX can keep its trademark tagline “Nobody in the world sells more real estate than RE/MAX,” after being named top real estate franchise by system sales on the Franchise Times’ 2018 Top 200+.
The 45-year-old brand tallied $10.9 billion in system sales in 2017, a number that is based on 2.5 percent of the reported sales volume in order to give real estate companies credit for the estimated commission earned from a sale, rather than the full listing price.
In addition to being ranked No. 1 among home services companies, RE/MAX was in the top 10 overall, beating out trademark brands such as Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Hilton Resorts and Hotels, Dunkin’ and Hyatt.
Adam Contos
“RE/MAX and the RE/MAX network continues to outperform many of our competitors, year after year, in annual surveys and rankings,” said RE/MAX CEO Adam Contos in a prepared statement. “Our franchise model highlights the significance of the individual real estate agent, and it’s one of the many reasons why RE/MAX attracts some of the most talented and top-performing professionals in the industry.”
Besides RE/MAX, four other real estate franchises made the list including Keller Williams ($8.2 billion), Berkshire Hathaway Home Services ($2.8 billion), Realty One Group ($438.6 million) and United Real Estate ($90.3 million).
This new ranking is bound to stoke the competitive fire between RE/MAX and Keller Williams who have been playing tug of war all year over who has the highest sales volume.
In January, Keller Williams triumphantly announced it’d surpassed RE/MAX as the nation’s sales volume leader by racking up $72.5 billion in deals during Q4 2017. T3 Sixty provided Inman with stats that supported Keller Williams’ claims and noted that the uptick in sales volume was likely the result of an increased agent count.
RE/MAX was in the midst of an internal investigation involving a loan between co-CEOS Dave Liniger and Adam Contos and had yet to release its Q4 totals, so T3 Sixty CEO Stefan Swanepoel said it was more likely that Gary Keller’s namesake had “drawn even” with RE/MAX or “probably just passed them.”
But, a few months later in May, Keller Williams officially beat out RE/MAX on the Swanepoel Mega 1000 list with $303 billion in sales and 1,041,948 transaction sides. RE/MAX came in second with $271 billion in sales and 1,036,000 in transaction sides.
So, which brokerage will finally pull the other over the center line? We’ll have to wait and see.