Owners, brokers, and franchisees have been sharing in the revenue of their real estate companies for over 100 years. This is entrepreneurship. Owners put up all the money and take the risks to start and build a company. They deserve it. Don’t you think?

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There is a distinct difference between Keller William’s profit sharing program and eXp Realty’s revenue sharing program. Profit comes to agents after everything else has been paid, including the franchise owner’s, and regional owner’s, and corporate owner’s revenue. It comes monthly, when the local market center makes a profit, and it doesn’t come when the local market doesn’t make a profit. It also doesn’t come if the agent has not done a transaction that particular month. Suffice it to say, profit sharing comes off the bottom line.

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Revenue sharing comes off the top. Without getting too much into the weeds, each individual agent has a $16,000 cap with eXp (team members have 8k caps or 4k for mega-teams). Roughly half of that revenue coming into the company is used to actually run the company, and roughly half is given back to the agents in the form of revenue share and stock awards.

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Is Revenue Sharing Sustainable?

We’ve been hearing from some neigh-sayers lately that revenue sharing is not sustainable. Here’s the dirty secret…it’s been sustainable in the real estate industry for more than 100 years. The first brokerage business was opened circa 1908. Entrepreneurs have been owning brokerages since that time. Why would they do that if there was no revenue? Of course there is revenue for owners of companies.

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There are billions of dollars funneling to the top of the traditional real estate company business model. Warren Buffet didn’t go buy a thousand houses during the recent real estate crash. Instead, he bought a bunch of real estate companies. He’s no fool. Ownership is where the money is.

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The difference in the eXp Realty revenue sharing model is that the agents are the owners of the company, and as owners, they are sharing in the revenue. As long as eXp Realty is a real estate company and agents are helping buyers and sellers with their real estate transactions, there will be revenue.

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eXp Realty is a real estate company, first and foremost. Without real estate agents conducting business, there would be no revenue to share. When any company has ebb and flow of revenue and expenses, they make adjustments.

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eXp has done exactly that. From the beginning of the revenue-sharing (2013) in the company, the plan was to adjust the compensation plan when we reached a certain growth marker…16,000 agents. That happened in December 2018, along with the Sustainable Equity Plan and Equity Offset Program. The plan was to maximize growth for a period of time, and then to move towards sustainability.