RE/MAX is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2023. And, as the housing market continues to shift and transaction volume deteriorates further, the firm is counting on what RE/MAX Holdings CEO Steve Joyce called the firm’s “proven track record of success.”
Mortgage rates reached their highest level in decades in Q4 2022 and buyer demand waned, causing existing home sales to drop 34% year over year in December. However, RE/MAX revenue dropped to $81.3 million during the same quarter — a decline of just 8.9% compared to Q4 2021 — and the firm recorded a net loss of $2.6 million. RE/MAX attributes the comparatively low drop in revenue to a 9.1% decline in organic growth and adverse foreign currency movements of 1.1%.
Despite recording weaker financial results in Q4, total revenue for the full year 2022 was up 7.2% to $353.4 million. In addition, the firm recorded a net income of $4.8 million, which it said was driven by a 7.8% annual growth that was attributable to acquisitions and offset by a 0.8% year-over-year decrease in organic growth.
“The rapid decline in housing market activity during Q4 was highly unusual, and although we expect headwinds to persist, we also see cause for optimism as we enter the spring selling season. One thing the company has learned over the past five decades is the importance of distinguishing between what we can and cannot control,” Joyce told investors and analyst in the firm’s fourth-quarter earnings call Friday morning. “We cannot control the macroeconomic swings that impact the industry, but we can prepare for them and control our reaction to them, and right now, our 50 years of experience, highlighted by five decades of consecutive growth, is telling us to stay focused on supporting our two networks with the tools, technology and training they need to thrive in any environment.”
RE/MAX executives were also pleased to see the firm’s agent count grow during a year characterized by a decrease in the number of active agents in the market. Year over year, fourth quarter agent count was up 1.4% to 144,014 agents. Despite the overall jump in agent count, the firm’s U.S. and Canada agent count was down 2.3% year over year to 82,917 agents as of January 31, 2023.
“Although there has been recent contraction in both the U.S. net agent count and the overall real estate market, we are thrilled that we had thousands of agents join RE/MAX last year,” RE/MAX president Nick Bailey said. “Nearly 10,000 agents in the U.S., almost 4,000 in Canada and over 27,000 agents in the rest of the world joined throughout 2022. The continuation of this type of activity, combined with our strategic initiatives, will be key to our growth prospects in 2023.”
The firm was also optimistic about the rollout of its real estate agent technology suite, MAX/Tech powered by kvCORE. The rollout began in Canada in late 2022 and executives said that 90% of agents have already been onboarded. The firm said the success of the Canadian rollout encouraged it to accelerate the U.S. launch to the first week of January 2023, two months earlier than anticipated.
Executives also highlighted the growth of Motto Mortgage, whose franchise count rose 23.5% year over year in Q4, with the office count jumping to 231 offices nationwide.
“The mortgage industry has been hit particularly hard by the Fed’s moves to cool inflation by raising interest rates, which has, in turn, put a chill on the housing market. And, like RE/MAX, while we believe Motto’s franchise model insulates us from broader industry gyrations better than most, they’re not totally immune. We’ve seen a tight correlation between the rise in interest rates and the slowdown in our franchise sales in Q2 of last year,” Ward Morrison, the president of Motto Mortgage, said. “Importantly, model sales have continued, but at slower pace. We sold 40 franchises over last year, a very respectable number in today’s business climate, but still off the 60 unit sales and 70 unit sales pace we experienced the past few years. The news regarding our Motto office openings is better, as 2022 is our best year ever in terms of the number of offices opened. This helped accelerate our growth rate during Q4 in the end of the year, with over 230 open Motto offices with more in the pipeline.”
Looking ahead, RE/MAX executives feel encouraged that their firm has what it takes to tackle the 2023 housing market.
“We’re capitalizing on the market changes and driving innovation, such as our initiatives around teams and mergers and acquisitions and conversions of brokerages,” Bailey said. “The real estate market is about timing, but not about the timing that people think. It’s not timing the rates, inflation, the economy or headlines, but it’s timing based on the personal needs and life events for people. Marriage, kids, divorce, jobs, that will be what the 2023 market is all about, and that’s what we’ve seen drive the market for five decades.”
