Real Brokerage’s acquisition of REMAX raised eyebrows, but the bigger questions are about franchise conflict and cannibalization risk.
There had been rumors swirling for months that REMAX was ripe for acquisition. The company was carrying significant debt, and its story had stopped resonating with capital markets.
It wasn’t a dead company by any means, but as Russ Cofano, co-founder and principal at Alloy Advisors, put it, the longer you continue that kind of spiral, the harder it becomes to come back from.
So when Real Brokerage made its move, the deal was surprising on the surface. But dig a little deeper, and maybe it wasn’t.
“Real and REMAX really couldn’t be more different as companies,” Cofano told Inman. Real’s situation, he noted, has its own pressures. Growth has been slowing, their stock price is down roughly 50 percent over the past year, and operating as a publicly traded company means you need to show growth. “REMAX may not be the perfect fit, but it can move the needle,” Cofano said.
‘Could these 2 systems cannibalize each other?’
The structural differences between the two companies, however, are significant. In Real’s organization, the primary customer is the agent. At REMAX, it’s the broker-owner and the franchisee. Those are two very different relationships, Cofano said, and it raises an immediate question: How does Real create value for the franchisees?
“REMAX wasn’t growing its base, and growth for Real has been slowing,” Cofano said. “That doesn’t change automatically by combining these two companies.”
There’s also the question of channel conflict, Cofano said. REMAX’s mission is to make broker-owners successful. Real, meanwhile, has built its model around supporting agents through recruiting and revenue sharing.
“Real can’t just incorporate their system into REMAX’s system,” Cofano said. “Could these two systems cannibalize each other?”
Put these two companies together, and the tension becomes clear, as Cofano notes. If Real starts pushing its agent-direct model into the REMAX ecosystem, broker-owners may not see a partner; they’ll see a threat.
Why would an agent stay inside a REMAX franchise when Real is dangling revenue sharing and a direct relationship with no local franchise owner in the middle? Without anyone intending it, the REMAX franchise network could become a recruiting pipeline for Real’s own model.
That’s the cannibalization risk that Cofano is referring to.
REMAX broker-owners will be watching Real’s leadership closely for any sign that agents are being nudged toward the Real mothership. If that perception takes hold, franchise retention becomes a problem. And a franchise retention problem is an existential one for a company that just paid to acquire a franchise network.
The technology transition will add another layer of complexity. REMAX broker-owners and agents are fiercely independent, and Cofano said Real can’t take a heavy-handed approach to getting them onto its tech stack. They’ll need to lead with carrots, not sticks.
As for what this means for Real agents specifically, Cofano doesn’t see an obvious upside. “I don’t think Real agents benefit from this deal,” he said.
The consolidation pool is shrinking
Zooming out, Cofano said the Real-REMAX combination is one of only a handful of transactions that could have this kind of impact on the residential real estate industry. He added that eXp likely looked at acquiring REMAX at some point, but nothing materialized.
EXp has its own challenges, Cofano noted. Growth has stalled there, too, at least by the headline numbers.
EXp World Holdings finished 2025 with 83,060 agents worldwide — nearly flat from 82,980 a year earlier — but CEO Leo Pareja framed the stability as a competitive victory. With NAR membership shrinking 4 percent industrywide, Pareja told investors during the Q4 2025 earnings call that eXp “outperformed NAR attrition rates by 25 percent” in the U.S.
Financially, eXp’s full-year 2025 revenue rose 4 percent to $4.8 billion, though net loss edged up to $22.7 million from $21.3 million. Cash on hand finished at $124.5 million, up from $113.6 million a year ago.
Companies like HomeServices of America and Howard Hanna represent potential acquisition targets in the current wave of consolidation, according to Cofano. He said HomeServices is an interesting case, with Chris Kelly taking over as CEO in April 2025, and reports circulating in March 2025 — which HomeServices has flatly denied — that Compass was in advanced talks to acquire the company.
But the pool of transformational deals is shrinking fast. “There aren’t many more deals that will have the same type of splash as Real-REMAX,” Cofano said.
Whether the wave of consolidation is fully over remains to be seen. But the real question now, Cofano said, is which of these companies — having gone through the mergers and acquisitions — can actually execute a strategy to win.