As residential real estate’s most established legacy brands continue to change hands, eXp Realty CEO Leo Pareja says he sees an opening with brokerage owners, franchisees and large teams now reassessing not only where they fit, but who they want to align with.
Pareja’s pitch to brokerage owners has sharpened since eXp World Holdings acquired NextHome earlier this month, giving the cloud brokerage parent company a franchise platform to offer operators who may not want to fold directly into eXp Realty but are looking for a different ownership structure, leadership team or business philosophy.
Pareja framed the effort less as a simple recruiting opportunity than a bid to attract owner-operators who share eXp’s public stance on transparency, consumer-first brokerage practices and resistance to more closed listing ecosystems.
“There are a lot of folks who woke up under new ownership,” Pareja told Inman Tuesday, describing brokerage leaders who are having “interesting conversations” about the future of real estate and whether they remain aligned with companies that share their belief systems.
His comments come amid a wave of consolidation among the upper echelon of the brokerage industry, including Compass’ acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate and Real Brokerage’s pending acquisition of REMAX — deals that could leave franchisees, brokerage owners and large teams reevaluating their relationships with legacy brands.
The framing also builds on the message Pareja and NextHome co-founder James Dwiggins delivered after eXp’s acquisition of NextHome last week. When asked by Inman whether the deal had created something of an “anti-Compass coalition” in the brokerage world, Pareja rejected that characterization and instead described it as a “coalition of transparency.”
“What I can tell you that you’re seeing me do is sticking to my word,” Pareja reiterated Tuesday. “I do believe that I’m building a coalition of transparency.”
The strategy was on display earlier this week, when eXp announced two separate recruiting wins aimed at larger brokerage organizations.
On Monday, NextHome announced the addition of two Southern California offices with nearly 200 agents under brokerage leader Albert Meggers, marking the first offices to join NextHome following eXp World Holdings’ acquisition of the franchise brand. The offices will operate as NextHome Coastal Estates in Oxnard and NextHome Central Coast in Pismo Beach.
Hours earlier, eXp Realty Canada announced that INITIA Real Estate, a 1,000-agent organization with roughly $2.5 billion CAD in 2025 sales volume, had transitioned to eXp. INITIA will continue operating under its own identity as INITIA, brokered by eXp, while gaining access to eXp’s platform, training, technology and global referral network, the company said in a news release.
Pareja said the announcements were not one-offs, but part of a larger push to recruit brokerage operators and large teams as consolidation reshapes the industry.
Asked whether the industry should expect more announcements like the Southern California expansion, Pareja did not hesitate. “One hundred percent,” he said, though he declined to discuss timing.
The strategy marks a notable evolution for eXp, which built its growth around a cloud-based brokerage model that appealed first to individual agents, then teams and large teams. But Pareja said the NextHome acquisition gives eXp another “chassis” for operators who prefer a franchise structure.
Historically, Pareja said, NextHome has been a small- to mid-size office franchise. What made the acquisition attractive, he added, was the opportunity to pursue larger formats, including major offices and brokerage operators.
“This is a perfect example,” Pareja said of the Southern California expansion. “Some folks may not have understood what we did and what we did it for.”
Pareja said the pitch is not limited to one company or brand. He pointed broadly to franchisees and brokerage leaders at major legacy companies, including Compass International Holdings, REMAX and Keller Williams, while emphasizing that he was not criticizing those companies or their operators.
“They’re amazing operators, and they wouldn’t be the top three” otherwise, Pareja said. “But I think anytime you change something, it creates curiosity. And people are going to go, ‘Wait, what else is out there?’”
For Pareja, that curiosity is less about “culture” alone, a word he called “squishy,” and more about leadership and alignment in a period of disruption. Real estate, he said, remains a relationship business, and ownership changes can prompt brokerage leaders to ask who they want to align with as the industry shifts.
“I think culture comes from the top in leadership,” Pareja said. “And so, I’m focused on making sure we have the right folks with us.”
Pareja declined to comment on regulatory or antitrust questions tied to the broader consolidation wave, citing his fiduciary responsibility as CEO. But he said eXp’s recruiting efforts are part of a broader attempt to follow through on the company’s public positioning around transparency and consumer choice.
“I hope I’m not naive, but I think that stuff wins with consumers and agents.”