Today’s RealTrending features Tamir Poleg, CEO of The Real Brokerage. Poleg founded the brokerage in 2014 and went public in 2020. The firm is now up to 9,000 real estate agents and growing rapidly.
According to Poleg, in January 2023, they added 1,000 agents. But, with rapid growth comes challenges scaling company culture and systems to meet the needs to agents.
Poleg discusses his lessons learned, how he had to rebuild his technology platform in eight months and where he sees the most opportunity for brokers to gain market share in today’s climate.
Here is a small preview of today’s interview with Tamir. The transcript below has been lightly edited for length and clarity:
Tracey Velt: Everybody wants to say it’s a horrible market. It’s not a horrible market, it’s different than last year. A lot of brokerages are making changes and are continuing to work to contain those operating costs. What are some of the steps that you’ve taken this year to kind of contain operating costs? And where’s your focus this year?
Tamir Poleg: I think that what’s happening right now is just the market correcting itself. In an historic perspective, this is a healthy process that’s happening. In March of 2022, we identified that the market is about to change. And we went from attack mode to making sure that our agents know exactly what’s coming. Just making them aware that the party is almost over and winter is coming, and how should you prepare and how we as a brokerage can help you prepare.
We are very different because when you’re growing agents north of 100%, year over year, even if the market drops by 30%, then you’re still growing. And, as you said, we are non brick and mortar and we are very much reliant on on technology. We didn’t have an inflated human human labor count or expenses. I think that we were very conservative in the way we manage ourselves. We were never this company that raised hundreds of millions of dollars and just spend it on things that do not move the needle. And in times like these, it actually pays off. The trade off was that we probably did not enjoy those outrageous valuations like other companies that went all in and raised hundreds of millions and just spent a lot of on marketing. We were kind of building the business the way we thought was healthy.
The RealTrending podcast features the brightest minds in real estate. Twice a month, brokerage leaders, top agents, team leaders, and industry experts share their success secrets, trends, and lessons learned navigating this ever-changing industry. Hosted by Tracey Velt and produced by Elissa Branch.
