Realty of America rockets into RealTrends Verified Rankings top 50 in first full year

Growing up in poverty in Chicago, Realty of America founder and CEO Eddie Garcia, remembers going to the Archdiocese of Chicago on Tuesdays each week as a child to pick up a small box of food for his family. 

“I came from extreme poverty,” Garcia said. “Both of my parents were homeless, living under highway overpasses in Mexico City. We came to America when I was three, and we arrived to a one-bedroom apartment that we shared with 11 people.” 

Gracia said this experience growing up defined who he is now and why he wanted to chase his version of the American dream.

“When I was 16 or 17, I decided that there was no way I was going to repeat the cycle of poverty,” he said. “I wanted to change my life. I believe we are in the greatest country in the world and if you want to chase your version of your American dream, you can do it here because there is fairness. America doesn’t care where you come from.” 

Initially, Garcia believed a law degree was his path to a brighter future, but after meeting a successful real estate agent in his neighborhood, he decided to drop out and pursue a career in the housing industry. 

“Once I got my license, I didn’t sell anything for the first six months. Once I sold something, my broker didn’t pay me,[but] I still realized that I had found a way to make money. I thought that if I could scale it and replicate it, I could become very successful very fast,” Garcia said. “So, I went from 20 homes to 40 homes to 50 homes in a year. In my best year as a single agent, I sold 104 houses.” 

Founding Realty of Chicago

Garcia said he spent the next nearly two decades “married to his business,” founding his first firm Realty of Chicago in 2012.

“A lot of the same people I grew up with saw my success and wanted to become agents, so I told them to get their license and find a brokerage to work at and we could do masterminds. But they all wanted to work with me, so I opened Realty of Chicago,” Garcia said. “We started from zero and grew to about 400 agents doing 12,000 transactions a year.” 

In 2023, Garcia had an idea for his next venture: a national brokerage firm. This led him to approach Houston-based real estate team leader, Mark Dimas. In 2023, Dimas’s team was the No. 1 large team in the country by transaction side count in the RealTrends Verified Rankings. 

“As I grew Realty of Chicago, I started making friends throughout the country who were building their own businesses and we would mastermind, but I knew that the model I had in Chicago would not scale in some of these other cities,” he said. “Mark Dimas was the first person I spoke with about Realty of America because who better to talk to about my crazy idea than one of the top agents in the U.S.?” 

Launching Realty of America

To Garcia’s surprise, Dimas decided to join him in building Realty of America, a virtual, cloud-based firm which officially launched in September 2024. 

“We made lists of the top-50 agents that we admire, not because they are just great [real estate agents], but because they are great humans and business people. We started reaching out to them and meeting with them,” Garcia said. “We went to a conference in Miami and met with several one-on-one. Then, within two days, we had solidified the starting seven agents we wanted to build the company with.” 

These agents quickly went to work, and in 2025, Realty of America closed 9,374 transaction sides, totaling $3.82 billion in sales volume, according to RealTrends Verified data. This earned the firm the No. 42 rank in the nation for sides and the No. 61 rank for volume in the 2026 RealTrends Verified Rankings in just its first full year of operation. Garcia said the firm currently has over 3,100 agents and is open in 22 markets, with launches in Nashville, Michigan and Puerto Rico expected in the coming weeks. 

Central to Realty of America, according to Garcia, is the firm’s revenue share model, a model which he feels is the future for real estate brokerages. Ultimately, Garcia would like to take the firm public. “We are still a little small, so I’d love to wait until we have 12,000 to 15,000 agents and are debt-free and profitable,” Garcia said. “We have not taken any investor money, and we are not going to until we IPO. We’ve watched some of these other companies before us, and we don’t want to make the same mistakes.”

“I’d love to wait until we have 12,000 to 15,000 agents and are debt-free and profitable,” Garcia said. “We have not taken any investor money and we are not going to until we IPO. We’ve watched some of these other companies before us, and we don’t want to make the same mistakes.”

In addition to the firm’s expansion, Garcia is also proud of the technology Realty of America is developing, having already built its own application, as well as consumer and agent platforms. He said he would like Realty of America to own at least 60% of the technology it uses before he takes the company public, hopefully in the next few years. Garcia said Realty of America was already approached by a sponsor to do an IPO, but he feels the company is still too new to make the jump.

“I think in the next five years, we will see the majority of agents become part of a revenue share model, which means that roughly 160,000 agents will move to revenue share a year, which is a massive opportunity for us,” Garcia said. 

Finding leaders to scale the firm

While attracting agents is certainly a goal, Garcia said he is “uber focused” on finding the right leaders to help him scale the company and reach their goals. 

“We have a great executive team with a lot of people from eXp and Real Brokerage, who helped scale those operations,” Garcia said. “With my business, I don’t want to be the smartest person in the room. I want to get people that are way smarter than me.” 

Garcia’s story is less about a single breakout moment and more about a steady refusal to accept limits — whether in his own life or in the way brokerages operate. As Realty of America scales, its success will hinge on whether that same scrappy, people-first approach can translate across markets without losing its edge.

For now, Garcia is betting that alignment — through leadership, technology and revenue share — will prove more durable than traditional models. And if his track record is any indication, he’s not building for the next quarter, he’s playing the long game.