Every Real Estate Agent should join eXp Realty – 5 Reasons Why

Okay, I know that is a bold title. But I honestly do believe every real estate agent, or nearly (we can leave out a few bad apples) should join eXp Realty. I’ve been licensed in Oregon since 2003 as a Broker initially and as a Principal Broker today. In the those last 17 or so years I’ve been a part of a (single) handful of Realty companies and have been recruited by most in town at one point or another.

Let’s be honest to start, there are plenty of good Realty companies in and around Oregon and southern Washington. I have very particular reasons to share why I’m at eXp Realty and why I believe any other good real estate agent in the U.S. should consider joining. And in fact, many are – eXp Realty is the fastest growing Realty company in the world and currently the 4th largest in the U.S.

5 Reasons the eXp Realty Model is cutting-edge modern and the “Most Likely to Succeed” in the future real estate market.

1. Realty companies must charge more reasonable rates to ensure future success.

The country is still full of traditional real estate offices that charge their real estate agents huge fees and provide little to no meaningful support or business in return. This in turn keeps real estate commission high, higher than they need to be. See our 2020 average real estate commission report here. Many of these traditional offices have policies that require their agents to get special permission to go under a certain commission rate, say 5% or 6%. Their reasoning for this is simple: If their agents don’t charge high fees, then how can their office demand such high cuts? Exp Realty has no such demand. It charges a reasonable rate to support its agents and I believe recognizes that neither huge corporate office space nor massive national branding campaigns represent the future of the industry. Most agents meet their clients at the homes they want to buy or sell and work out of their home office or coffee shop, or in my case, own their own commercial office building already. We don’t need corporations to provide us with high rise office space. Additionally, the real estate market has a lot of forces behind it, slowly putting downward pressure on commission and if the company above you has a high overhead, how will they last in the industry? Their national TV ads to promote their expensive brand won’t help you sell a single property (in my experience).

2. Realty companies must support the sales effort of individual agents, not the other way around.

I believe the consumer has come to realize that there is little to no difference between one real estate office or another, but there are huge differences between what individual agents offer, even within the same companies. The vast majority of licensed real estate agents are independent contractors and the general public in large has come to realize this. In general, the consumer picks real estate agents they like with services, rates, and marketing they want for their home. Almost no one is calling a Realty office because they like that brand or believe it will perform for them in a unique way. They call individual agents with individual rates, plans, and services. I believe eXp Realty understands this and doesn’t waste money advertising their own brand nationally and instead focuses their money on training and networking support for their real estate agents to help them run their own individual business better. (I believe eXp Realty provides the best possible training and networking support in the industry, which I will get to next.)

3. Realty companies must focus on providing their agents with a fantastic sales network, not on their own corporate franchise branding.

I have been a part of local Realty companies where I had access to the fifty or one hundred agents in my office, but not the other company’s office down the street because they were a franchise model and each office had different management and tech. I though that being with a large national Realty company would give me a network to help me sell my client’s homes, but because of the franchise model and their use of competing tech. systems – it didn’t. EXP Realty on the other hand, owns their own proprietary online networking cloud software called VirBELA. Every real estate agent at eXp Realty (over 30,000 right now and growing fast) has one click access to every other real estate agent within the company (not a franchise, not competing systems – one system). We can send and receive referrals in all 50 states and around the world. We can share our buyers and sellers needs and play matchmaker in all 50 states and around the world. Any agent we want to talk with – with immediate, total access.

4. Realty companies must provide a constant stream of training and mentoring opportunities for agents at every point in their career.

While I’m writing this article I clicked a button to see the eXp online training calendar. In the online eXp Cloud all agents have instant access to this at no extra cost. It would be impressive to see one training option a day. More impressive to see say, five training options a day. Instead eXp Realty has multiple classes you can take (at no extra charge) starting at about every half hour of the day! The choices are near endless. Besides all the training opportunities there are countless top professionals at eXp Realty offering their services as mentors to new or newer agents. Within Oregon I’ve already connected with multiple of these seasoned agents who have conducted or overseen thousands of transactions over decades and are semi-retired, now focusing their efforts on mentoring new agents to follow in their successful footsteps.

5. Realty companies must offer their agents a few stand out reasons to join their agency.

On top of the major four reasons above that explain why I’m at eXp Realty and would encourage others to join, this international Realty company provides a few additional exceptional advantages. EXP Realty provides stock buy-in options for its agents. EXP Realty is working on a national MLS portal (I could talk about this advantage for hours, but I’ll wait until the platform is live.) EXP Realty is has its own health insurance offering for agents and is constantly looking for other similar support tools for each of its members. I could go on and on. If you want to know more, call my office at 503-714-1111 and ask for Stephen FitzMaurice to learn more.