Power Hour | Sales Training with Tamir Poleg - CEO and Founder of Real Broker

Thank you, Andrea. Excited to be here. Hi, everyone. Thanks for logging in.

Wow. Um, I'll call you straight. Yeah, two big questions and kind of somewhat explosive topics, to be honest. So I'll start with the consolidation of brokerages. It started, I think it was early 2025, with the acquisition of Redfin by Rocket. And I think that each one of those consolidation events came from a different reason, different angle. But maybe all of them kind of pointing in one direction, and I'll get to that. But it started with Rocket and Redfin, and I think that what Rocket was interested in is obviously the traffic that Redfin.com has, and they wanted to convert that to mortgage leads as well. So this is where they saw the opportunity. I'm not sure that Rocket was interested in running a brokerage. But, I mean, Redfin did have a lot of buyer traffic, and Rocket was interested in that. And then it followed with the acquisition of Anywhere by Compass, which was a different strategic move, obviously creating the largest brokerage in the country and actually in the world. I think that what Compass was after is market share and also control of data, and I'll touch on that in a moment. And then we announced the acquisition of RE/MAX at the end of April. And if you read the S4 filing that we filed on Friday, you can actually see that we actually submitted our first bid to acquire RE/MAX back at the beginning of 2024. So this has been going on for a while. And we had a completely different reason to do that compared to the previous two acquisitions in the field. What we saw is an iconic brand in 120 countries, great agents, very high productivity per agent on the RE/MAX side. We thought that Real can really help them with just reinvigorating growth and just adding to their value proposition, and by that taking RE/MAX back to a positive growth trajectory in North America. So that was our reason.

Now I think that what's happening right now with Zillow and Compass is interesting because at the end of the day, what is happening in our industry is that we agents control data or own data, and this is listing data. All of the information that we're receiving from sellers about their listings, and once we list a home, we collect all of that data. We upload it to the MLS, and then Zillow is actually the one who monetizes that data, and they're making a lot of money. They're making billions through showing that data to consumers. And I think that what happened — and again, I'm only speculating because I don't know what Robert Reffkin's agenda is — but I think that what Robert is seeing is that, hey, there's this behemoth, Zillow, who's making a ton of money out of our data, and maybe we can get a piece of the pie. And in order to change the way that data is handled, you need to have significant market share. So you can get back to Zillow and say, 'Hey, we're now the number one player. We have significant market share. Something needs to change.' This is only me speculating. And by the way, I will tell you that it's only fair that agents, you monetize your data. So just imagine having a listing and earning a few hundred dollars just from Zillow or Realtor.com or Homes.com paying you for the data that they're using in order to generate consumer traffic.

Yeah, I agree that something needs to change because it's just not fair. This is your data. You should be entitled to make money out of it. So I can tell you that there has been a lot of background conversations between a lot of players thinking about different angles on how to tackle this and different initiatives in the past two, three years. My guiding star was always: if this allows our agents to monetize their data, then we participate. But unfortunately, this has not been the case because everyone who was trying to create something — and when I say something, it's an alternative to the MLS or a data layer that agents and brokerages will upload their data into a certain platform and that platform will disseminate the data into all of the portals — all of those players were thinking about themselves. They were not thinking about the agents. And this is why we chose not to partner with anyone on the exclusive listings, pre-marketing, all of those initiatives that happened, because I thought that, a) we polled our agents and more than 95% of our agents said that their clients are not interested in any pre-marketing strategies or exclusive listings, and b) none of those initiatives allowed our agents to make more money out of their data. And I think that this is where the industry should be going. And now with the acquisition of RE/MAX, obviously we're a much bigger player. We have a seat at the table. Nobody can ignore us. The amount of phone calls and emails that I receive from top CEOs in the industry has been overwhelming because everybody wants us in their corner. But having us in their corner means that they will need to take care of our agents, and so far we haven't found the right initiative to partner with.

Um, it's a good question because we were never looking to acquire any brokerage. We grew organically up to this point and were over 34,000 agents. We never acquired a competing brokerage, besides the announced acquisition of RE/MAX, which hasn't closed yet. And I have to remind everyone that we're still operating as two separate companies because we haven't closed the transaction. But we believed in our own path in remaining independent, and we knew that we have a good offering for agents, and this is why we continue to grow in a great market in 2020, 2021, and you know, first half of 2022, and also through that downward cycle. We are kind of an outlier because we continue to grow. And then the reason for acquiring RE/MAX is because we thought that there are just great synergies between the companies. Both companies focus on helping agents succeed in real estate. Both companies just ignore the politics and just focus on execution. Both companies believe in production, and we just thought that using everything that we built on the Real side — our technology, our culture, our momentum, our growth mindset — that could really benefit RE/MAX, and this is why the conversation even started. We were not looking to make an acquisition.

Now moving forward, when the transaction closes, we will continue to operate the two companies under two different brands. There will be the RE/MAX brand and the Real brand. If you're an agent and you're looking for more freedom, flexibility, you're a little bit more tech-savvy, you don't need the office access, you want to grow your own brand, you can join under Real. If you're looking for office access, you need the backing of a large brand, you can choose RE/MAX. But now we have two very different offerings under the same roof, so that we can appeal to pretty much all agents in the industry. Having said that, we also think that everything that we built on the tech side can benefit RE/MAX agents. So from day one, RE/MAX agents will have access to some of Real's technology. They will have an app. In that app, they will have access to the Real Academy, later on to the wallet. They will have access to a referral network combined Real and RE/MAX, so you will have more referral opportunities. There will be some features that they will have access to. And their franchises, the broker owners, the folks that actually run offices for RE/MAX, they will have access to Real if they choose to. They can stay under their existing systems, or they can choose to move to Real, to our tech stack, and then we obviously can help them with productivity, helping them save time, eliminate some costs in their office, and just helping them with margins. So that's the idea. And we are now working on all of the integration plans, understanding the RE/MAX organization. This is a company that was established 53 years ago. A lot of history, amazing footprint in more than 120 countries around the world. So a lot to learn and to understand, and this is what we'll be doing in the next few months.

Um, a few things. Your question is kind of similar to asking our agents, why did you choose Real? Why did you join Real? And typically what we hear is the freedom and flexibility that the platform allows them. The amazing culture that we managed to build here, a culture of collaboration where everybody feels like they're responsible for the other agents' success. And this is extremely unique, and that attracts a lot of agents. The technology that we offer, obviously the compelling economics, and then all of the other opportunities to monetize your business, from title JVs to the Real Originate program on the mortgage side to the stock purchase program to revenue share. All of those things that can help you diversify your streams of income, going from only commission to multiple streams of income. And I think that we kind of reached a great balance between the cost of being at Real, of being at this brokerage, to the value that we offer, and we constantly try to enhance the value every year. There are new developments, new things that we're offering. So I think that it's just all of those reasons, and obviously the fact that agents that are here — and keep me honest, by the way — agents that are part of Real truly feel like we're working for them. We truly care. And I know that there are a lot of brokerages who care about their agents, but I can tell you that I cannot go to sleep at night knowing that there is an agent who is waiting for an answer or is waiting to get paid. And I will personally jump in and make sure that that happens. And that kind of mindset propagates throughout the organization, and that probably ends up with agents feeling that we care.

Sure. I've had a lot of RE/MAX agents and broker owners reach out to me, and I was trying to engage in conversations to the extent that is allowed right now, just because again we are operating as two different brands and two separate companies at the moment. I think that at the beginning there was a mix of excitement and some hesitation, because people were asking questions, and honestly we didn't have all the answers, and RE/MAX management didn't have all the answers. So I think that what comforted them is the understanding that RE/MAX remains RE/MAX. We have a lot of respect for this brand, and nothing changes for them unless they choose to use some of the things that we offer, and if they don't, then it's business as usual. So for them, it's just additive because they can continue to do what they do, not change anything in their business, and have some options to add on top of that, and it's their option. Nobody's mandating anything. No, nobody's forcing them to do anything. And I think that once they understood that, then the slight hesitation also switched to excitement and curiosity and support, and this is what we've been feeling over the past few weeks. I could tell you that it's a little bit frustrating to know that this transaction will close in a couple of months, and in the meantime, I cannot really engage in conversations to the extent that I want on the RE/MAX side, because I do want them to feel comfortable. I do want them to feel comfortable reaching out to me, and I want to be accessible. But legally, it's kind of a little bit tricky. But I'm sure that once we close the transaction, we will be out there meeting the RE/MAX network, flying from place to place, state to state, even country to country, and just making sure that they understand that we are here to help them, to help them grow their businesses, help them in their operations, and just make things even better for the RE/MAX network. So looking forward to closing.

The models remain the same on the Real side and on the RE/MAX side. So if you're with RE/MAX, nothing changes. You're on a certain plan. If you're a broker owner, you have your obligations toward RE/MAX. Nothing changes in that. What we are thinking about is how can we somehow get RE/MAX agents involved in agent attraction, for example, both on the RE/MAX side and on the Real side. But those are just preliminary thoughts. In the meantime, I can tell you that nothing changes in the model for each company.

Um, when I met Eric, RE/MAX CEO, for the first time back — I think it was January of 2024 or December of 2023 — it was a week after he was nominated to be the CEO of RE/MAX, and the first thing that we talked about is the similarities in culture between RE/MAX and Real, both on the corporate side and on the agent side. Because even though they are a franchise model and we are a non-brick-and-mortar model, I think that if you talk to a RE/MAX agent and a Real agent, you will see that both of those personas are kind, hardworking, focused on real estate, no politics, and just good people. And I think that on the cultural side, you will discover that there is a lot of cultural alignment between the two companies. Now we want to make sure that we create even more opportunities for Real agents and RE/MAX agents to meet, to educate themselves. So we want to try and leverage local events and invite both Real and RE/MAX agents to one venue, or sometimes maybe to a RE/MAX office, where people can get educated and we bring great speakers. And by that strengthen the culture of the combined company to some extent. As I said, we are building a platform for referral exchange where Real agents can upload a referral and both Real agents and RE/MAX agents can react and pick up that referral, and vice versa. And then on the Real Academy, we want to make sure that we have speakers both from Real and from RE/MAX. So we will try and create some overlap in some activities and bring together agents from both companies.

A risk for what? For other companies maybe. You know, if you look at 2023 to 2025, we've grown our agent count between five and 10,000 agents on an annual basis. And I believe that we will continue to grow that way. I don't see the risk because we have the systems, we have the know-how. Now, this will be kind of the fourth or fifth year of rapid growth, and we are just becoming bigger and more established. We know how to handle our business. We have a very strong team. So I don't really see the risk, unless you're another player in the industry that is seeing that Real is growing and you're not. But even in that case, you should probably be happy for us.

Um, a couple of things here. One, you'll actually be surprised how little to no time I'm spending on what others are doing. Honestly, I just couldn't care less because I think that we are only competing with ourselves. The opportunity is there. We have the right offering, and then if we succeed or fail, it's just because of our execution. So it wouldn't help me to focus on what others are doing because it's not additive to what we're building. So I'm not really looking at what others have built. I mean, sometimes you try to analyze other companies and understand why their growth has stagnated, and just to make sure that you're not going in that direction. I think that as long as you continuously build value for agents and you don't focus on vanity metrics, for example agent count. I'll put it differently. I believe that agent count is the result of you successfully building value for agents. So first build value, and then expect agents to follow. And if you lead with agent count, or 'we want to be the biggest', then you're probably not focusing on the right thing, which is building value for those agents. So what we do every day is just think how can we drive and deliver more value to our agents, both short-term and long-term, out of the expectation and belief that agents will continue to join us if we build great products, great offerings, and great service.

I'll start with the last question. Canada is much more complicated when it comes to doing certain things. Even if we're talking about, you know, fintech and the Real Wallet, it just takes longer, it's more complicated, and it's also more expensive. But we are committed to delivering all of those products to Canada. Now, the reason why we went into fintech, mortgage, title, and later on there will be additional services, is because of two main reasons. One, we believe that buying a home right now is not a great experience for consumers. It's fragmented. It lacks transparency. It takes a long time. There's no control as a buyer. And it needs to be improved. And the only way to improve it is to control each and every step of the way. So you have to control mortgage, you have to control brokerage, you have to control title. At some point you have to be able to offer insurance. You just need to be able to offer that client all of the services that they need in one place. Everything is integrated, saving them time, giving them the peace of mind that the transaction will close, and just making it somewhat seamless. And this is why we embarked on that mission of creating an end-to-end transaction solution for our agents' clients. Number two, brokerage is a low margin business, and you need to constantly try and sell more things in order to be able to operate a profitable business. I will add to that that by operating mortgage and title, we can offer our agents even more opportunities. I don't know if anyone here opted into Real Originate and became a licensed loan officer and a relationship officer in certain transactions, but this is a great way to make another couple of thousand dollars per transaction or a few hundred dollars per transaction just by doing the same things. So for us, it's building something that works better for our agents' clients, but also creates opportunities for our agents to monetize their businesses in multiple ways. And this is especially important and prevalent in market conditions like these, where you're just closing fewer transactions and the cost of feeding your family is still the same, or running your business is still the same if not higher. So how can you actually extract more dollars out of the same amount of transactions or a lower amount of transactions? And this is what we've been thinking about, and this is why we were kind of engaged in all of those ancillary services that we launched in the past couple of years.

Um, I don't know how many of you tried to experiment with Hey Leo, but Hey Leo is still in beta phase, and it allows you to invite your clients to interact with an AI assistant, and that AI assistant is collecting data from them on their desired property. Hey Leo can show them listings. Hey Leo can refine their search. Hey Leo can understand without them using words, but by just them liking properties or the way they're refining the search, Hey Leo can actually understand what's in the back of their mind and what they're actually looking for. Hey Leo can get them pre-qualified for a mortgage. And Hey Leo soon, with the AI model, will be able to create a profile for each and every client that it's talking to. So we believe that AI can make agents, and will be able to make agents, significantly more efficient. One thing that we are working on right now, and we will be launching at RISE, I don't know how many of you are familiar with agentic AI or AI agents that are expert in a certain task, but this is something that we are now building. So just imagine that you will have 30 or 100 different employees. Those will be AI employees, and each and every one of them is an expert in one task. So let's say one AI agent is an expert at creating social media sharables. Another one will be an expert at creating CMAs. Another one will be an expert at uploading MLS data. There will be one AI agent per task, and it will be perfect, much better than a human can do. And you as a Real agent, you will have access to all of them, and the gateway to those AI agents will be Leo. All you will have to do is instruct Leo what to do, and Leo will actually instruct that specific AI agent on what they need to do, and you will be able to see the work in the background. So there will be an illustration that will provide you feedback on what this AI agent is currently doing for you. And this is not in five years. This is not in two years. I'm talking about the end of this year, and we will gradually launch more and more AI agents for you to use, so that at the end of the day you can focus on building relationships with your

Clients generating leads, but anything besides that you can delegate to your AI agents, and you will become a boss of an organization that is simply working for you and will allow you to be, I think, 10 times more productive, or if you choose to just spend more time on your hobbies or with your family, because there will be somebody else, that AI, that will be doing the things that you are currently doing.

It's a good question, because those of you who are actually using AI a little more extensively understand that you have to constantly purchase either tokens, credits, whatever you call it. There's a cost to us to operate AI, and obviously we're not looking to make money out of it, but also we want to make sure that we mitigate the expense.

Yeah, so I would assume that at some point you will just have to pay for the tokens that you're using. But we're not talking about huge amounts. If you're currently using AI, you understand that for reasonable use you're talking about a few dollars, or maybe $10, $20, $30 per month.

I feel like I answered some of it at the beginning of the conversation. I can tell you that ReMax agents will not have access—at least that's the way we're thinking about things right now. We don't think that ReMax will have a share purchase program. So, no equity program on the ReMax side. We do want to be able to pay revenue share to ReMax agents if they attract agents to Real, for example. So, this is something that we're thinking about. Again, it's just a thought. This is still not a valid program. All of the shared activities that we mentioned—the Real Academy, the referral system, everything that has to do with education and in-person events and online events—that will be open to everyone, obviously. This is open to agents on both sides. But largely speaking, I will say that it's business as usual on each side with some sort of overlap, but I don't think that there will be any dramatic change.

It's a good question, because I've heard from multiple team leaders at Real that 2025 has been their best year ever. And it means that there are opportunities in every market. And I think that, first of all, I'll start with the obvious: the ones that are winning are the ones that are not giving up, and the ones that actually believe that they can succeed regardless of market conditions. And you know what? Even us on a company level, the fact that we continue to grow and be an outlier in the industry is because we believe that the market should not limit us, that our success is dependent on us and not on external factors. So this is something that I would encourage everyone to adopt—that mindset of yes, the market is difficult, it takes longer to close a deal, there are fewer opportunities, but you can actually win regardless of what the market is dictating. So that's number one.

Number two, what's really shining right now is your ability to create those personal relationships, cultivate them, and deliver value to your clients. If you slow down, if you give up, if you don't communicate as much as in the past, if the quality of your communication is degrading, then you're probably losing. So you have to keep pushing. You have to understand that people are thirsty for information. People are thirsty for answers. Buyers, a lot of buyers really want to buy a home. And sometimes they have the answers on their side, but they don't know how to interpret the data. They don't have the solutions. You can bring them the solutions and actually turn someone who just read on the news that this is not a good time to buy a home, or that mortgage rates are at 6.5% and the monthly payments are high—you can actually bring the solutions to them. And if you just take the high mortgage rates for granted and you're not thinking about kind of out-of-the-box ideas on how your clients can actually accomplish this—this meaning buying a home—then you're probably not doing a great job or not giving them great service. And there's somebody out there who will find a solution for them to be able to move now instead of in a year or two years when rates drop.

So try and deliver value, try and deliver as much information as possible. Stay on top of everyone all the time. If you can afford it, don't slow down your marketing. If it's paid marketing and you have to slow down, okay, you still have a book of business that you can still be in touch with without spending money. Do all of those activities in your neighborhood, school, country club, whatever it may be. Just make sure that you position yourself to continue and be the winner when the market picks up, because it will pick up. I don't know if it will pick up in the second half of this year or in 2027 or in 2028. But I've been in real estate for 20 years right now, even a little bit more than 20 years, and it's cyclical and bad times don't last forever. And right now we're at a trough for about three years now. And we are in a down market for four years. It'll take another year, maybe two years, and that's it. And then we'll get a great market.

That's actually a smart question, but I don't remember what my answer was two years ago.

Wow, I don't remember anything specific. I think that typically the questions that have to do with the entrepreneurial side of me—and of you, because we're all entrepreneurs—I think that anything that has to do with the conviction and belief that you can make it work and you should not give up, those are typically smart questions. Because I'll share a story. When we started Real, there was another company that was financed by the same investors as us called Fiverr. I don't know how many of you used Fiverr in the past. It's a marketplace for people who are looking for certain jobs and people that are providing certain services. And we started almost at the same time with the same investors, and they always had it easy. They were able to attract a lot of clients. They were able to grow very rapidly. They were able to raise money. They went public in a large IPO. And I was always looking at Fiverr and saying, 'Hey, when we get to that step, which was the phase that Fiverr was in, things will be so much better. It will be so much easier. Life will be great.' And you know, every time I got to that phase and then they were one step ahead and I said, 'Okay, it's probably so great for them right now.' And at the end of the day, we're all facing the same things. We're all facing the same challenges. We're all facing the same problems. And we're in the same boat.

And this is what I'm trying to tell you today, that it doesn't matter if you're a solo agent, if you're running a team of five, if you're running a team of 500, if you're running a brokerage of 35,000 agents—the struggles are the same, because we are entrepreneurs and we chose a certain way of life and we are facing those challenges. And sometimes we lose and sometimes we win, but as long as we are in the game, we are winning. And I know that all of us, including myself, we have our bad days. We have days in which we're just saying, 'I wish I was doing something else' or 'I wish this was different.' But I can tell you that there's nothing else that I can imagine myself doing that will give me as much joy, happiness, and accomplishment as I'm doing. And I know that if you zoom out and you look at your lives and you look at your businesses, you probably feel the same. So just know that you're probably crushing it even if you don't see it.

Oh, I think I remember. I think I remember.

It's something that has to do with—my answer had to do with my grandfather.

Never mind. Just share the question from two years ago.

It was our first investor who became a friend.

Yeah. So this is a friend of mine who was our first investor, and he invested in a few very successful startups. And his advice to me was never give up, because there will always be a turn, a decision, something that will completely change the course of the company. So just know that you should never give up. And actually in 2019 we were very close to shutting down the company because we were left with no money. And he asked me to take a night and think about whether this is what I wanted to do with my life. Maybe there was something better for me. Maybe there was a better path. And I took the night and I came back to him and I said, 'I don't know how, but I'm going to make it work.' So we're not shutting down the company. I'm just going to make it happen. And then since then everything was great. But that was a little...