It’s official: Glenn Sanford is the new sheriff in town. He is the founder of eXp Holdings, and CEO of eXp Realty. The firm moved from No. The firm moved from No. 3 to No. 3 to No.
Robert Reffkin’s Compass remained at the top of sales volume, ranking No. For the second consecutive year, Compass remained at No. 1 in sales volume. Reffkin will be featured on the RealTrending podcast March 20th, where he discusses the brokerage’s growth plan and lessons learned scaling quickly. He also discusses his decision to build company culture through personal relationship building.
Compass’s major initiative this year is to emphasize the importance of culture and encourage agents into the office. This is already a requirement at New York City headquarters. He said, “There’s a energy when agents meet in person.”

Glenn Sanford, HW Media CEO Clayton Collins, at the 2022 Gathering of Eagles
Sanford was a featured speaker at 2022 RealTrends Gathering of Eagles. This is the premier leadership event in real estate. He spoke extensively about strategies brokers and brokerages can use to navigate the shift in market.
He acknowledged in a recent interview that the challenges facing the current market were not unique to his company. He said they were able to weather the market and that they will be focusing on production-based training and coaching this year.
“After more than 20 years, the Anywhere Advisors entity of Anywhere Real Estate was consistently No. 1 and the HomeServices of America entity of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices was consistently No. 2. Steve Murray, Senior Advisor at HW Media, founder of the rankings, said that the two young firms rose to the top in each category on the RealTrends 500.
Register today! Register now! This shows that there are many paths to growth. “The paths they took to achieve such growth were different in certain ways, but the same in others. Compass used their capital, a focus on high-producing agents, and teams in high end markets to achieve their goals. eXp used a combination of its own equity, revenue sharing, and the virtual nature its business to achieve its position. Murray stated that both organizations needed capital access and used it well.
It is notable that eXp was one of four top firms to grow its closed transactions and sales volume in 2022 when existing home sales were down significantly. Compass, on the other hand, fell at a slower pace than the other giants in the industry.
These firms, as well as all other residential brokerage businesses, can be certain of one thing: Retention and recruitment of agents and teams is the key driver for growth.
Murray stated that “We saw these firms in the past years and believed it would only be a matter of time until they became leaders in closed transactions, and sales volume.” “We expect Anywhere and HomeServices of America both to take new and further steps to increase their growth in the coming years.” We expect that competition will intensify in the years ahead.
The complete list of 2023 brokerage firms that are part of RealTrends 500 will be published on March 24, and announced in The Wall Street Journal on the same day.