Not satisfied with opportunities in his home market, George Kypreos has built a fast-growing national business with an unusual hub-and-spoke model. As broker/owner of GK Properties with headquarters in Henderson, Nevada, Kypreos serves the dynamic Las Vegas market with three offices and 57 agents. But he has also expanded to other geographic areas, opening a Realty ONE Group Edge brokerage in Atlanta, and Keller Williams company in North Carolina, along with other agents in various locations.
“We are all one team,” says Kypreos, whose Nevada company was one of RealTrends’ Nation’s Best top-performing brokerages with 1,856 transaction sides and $661 million in sales volume in 2021. Overall, Kypreos and his partner Cheryl Kypreos lead about 100 agents nationwide who serve both retail clients and institutional investors.
A Las Vegas native and former professional chef, Kypreos began his real estate career with Coldwell Banker more than 20 years ago. He founded GK Properties in 2016 and opened a new brokerage in Georgia two years later. “I have long been a top-producing agent here, but Las Vegas is a very competitive market, so when I wanted to expand I looked for niche opportunities around the country,” he says. “We quarterback everything from Las Vegas, and hold virtual meetings and go to the local markets in person.”
Focusing on the basics
Kypreos has built a successful brokerage by focusing on the basics. “We coach our agents [on] how to convert leads and stay in front of their database, empowering them for success,” he says. “I believe in the importance of hard work, and holding yourself accountable. Our expansion has been based on executing the fundamentals and having the right partners and team players.”
Regardless of location, Kypreos has a consistent operational approach. “We buy leads, and disperse them among our team members,” he says. When the company provides a successful lead, Kypreos takes the lion’s share of the commission, but the split is reversed if the agent generates a lead.
Providing value
Kypreos also provides agents with in-house services like marketing, photography, and transaction management support so they can focus on their client relationships. “We work with Zillow, BoomTown paid, Google paid, realtor.com and others, along with direct mail, trying to get the phones to ring and fill up the email boxes,” he says. “Our supportive services approach works, because we have agents doing 50 to 60 transactions a year, rather than 15 or 20 on their own. But an independent agent who can find leads and manage the business, isn’t really a fit for us.”
To maintain a common culture across markets, Kypreos hosts regular online sessions to discuss consumer trends and marketing strategies. “We like our veterans to show the rookies, and sometimes the rookies can teach the veterans,” he says. “We get everybody in the virtual pit together and share phone calls about how to get the consumer to feel comfortable with our services.”
Looking ahead, Kypreos isn’t interested in going vertical with ancillary services like mortgages or title insurance. “I didn’t want to go down that road,” he says. “Instead, I want the best vendors to earn their way with great service.”
But Kypreos is interested in growing his current markets and entering new metros in Arizona, Tennessee and Texas. “We’d like to recruit like-minded agents for our team and grow the numbers that way,” he says. “I don’t know what the future holds, but we keep looking at the map and see plenty of slivers of new opportunities.”
