Keller Williams enjoyed a strong second quarter of 2021, with the company seeing its transactions, sales volume and agent count all besting last year’s numbers.
The new figures come courtesy of Keller Williams’ latest earnings report. Among other things, the report shows that between April and June of this year, the company’s agents in the U.S. and Canada closed 367,248 transactions. That’s up 35 percent compared to the same period last year — which, it’s worth noting, took place at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic when the real estate market dipped in some areas before surging again over the summer of 2020.
However, Keller Williams’ second quarter transaction numbers were also up over the first three months of 2021, when U.S. and Canadian agents closed 272,688 deals. Tuesday’s report further notes that the company’s 35 percent year-over-year transaction growth beat the overall industry, which only saw closed transactions increase by 32.2 percent.
Beyond increased transactions, Keller Williams agents in Anglophone North America also did $145.3 billion in sales volume. That’s up 70.3 percent year over year, and handily tops the broader industry, which only saw volume grow by 52.5 percent, the report notes.
Agents also took on 214,492 new listings, up 20.7 percent year over year, and wrote 404,942 contracts, up 28.5 percent.
Additionally, Keller Williams saw its worldwide agent count increase by 4,277 in the second quarter of 2021, bringing the total to 184,654. That represents an increase of 9.6 percent compared to the second quarter of 2020. Of those agents, 171,269 work in the U.S. and Canada, up from 157,650 agents last year at the same time.
Outside the U.S. and Canada, Keller Williams agents closed 15,141 transactions in the second quarter of 2021, up 149.4 percent year over year, and did $2.9 billion in sales volume, up 214.2 percent.
Carl Liebert
In the report, Carl Liebert — CEO of KWx, the holding company that includes Keller Williams — expressed excitement about a growing agent count and the company’s overall performance.
“In Q2,” Liebert said, “we outperformed the market and have achieved substantial worldwide production and agent count gains in the face of dramatic market pressures.”
Keller Williams is not a publicly traded company and thus is not obliged to report the same earnings data as companies that sell their shares on the stock market. As a result, the report offers a useful glimpse into Keller Williams’ operations, but doesn’t have details on things like total revenue that might offer a direct comparison to other major real estate businesses.
On the other hand, there is ongoing speculation that Keller Williams is preparing to go public in the near future. The company has not confirmed any plans, and both Liebert and President Marc King have suggested Keller Williams’ future plans are not set in stone.
In addition to numbers regarding sales and agent counts, Keller Williams’ earnings report Tuesday also revealed data on the firm’s technology — which has been a major focus for years now. That data shows that Command, the company’s customer relationship manager (CRM) and technology platform, had 104,500 active monthly users as of the end of June. That’s up 11 percent compared to the end of the first quarter of this year.
Chris Cox, Keller Williams’ chief technology and digital officer, called those numbers a “signature achievement” in the report.
The report goes on to note that the average cost per lead inside Command was $2.61 in the U.S. and Canada. And as of the end of June, Keller Williams agents have run “a cumulative 56.7 million SmartPlans,” which the company describes as “the automated marketing and task management app” inside Command.
Tuesday’s earnings report follows several other upbeat reports from Keller Williams. In May, for example, the company reported that during the first quarter of 2021 its agents closed 272,688 transactions, up 21.3 percent year over year. And in February, Keller Williams revealed that during the final three months of 2020 it closed 350,692 transactions, a year-over-year increase of 27.9 percent.
Given the upbeat earnings, it was no surprise that other executives shared Liebert’s positive tone in the report. Among them Jason Abrams, KWx’s head of industry, argued that the “hypercompetitive market is no match for our agents” — an apparent allusion to the ongoing lack of inventory in many areas.
Marc King
King also credited Keller Williams’ agents for the company’s success.
“They have remained steadfast in their commitment to provide the best experience for buyers and sellers in the midst of an extremely competitive market,” King said in the report. “And, as a company built by agents, for agents, we wake up every day asking ourselves how we can best support them.”
Correction: Keller Williams agent count grew 9.6 percent in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the second quarter of 2020. The subtitle of this post originally misstated when that growth took place.
