Welcome to the tech-ecosystem brokerage: How recent mergers will change how you work

The real estate industry is entering a new era of consolidation where technology infrastructure — not just brand scale — is becoming the primary driver of enterprise value.

Recent acquisitions by Compass, eXp World Holdings and The Real Brokerage illustrate how brokerages increasingly view proprietary software, artificial intelligence (AI) and integrated operational systems as future growth foundations.

Compass closed its acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate in January, while eXp purchased NextHome earlier this month to expand beyond its cloud-native brokerage structure into franchising.

Real announced its acquisition of REMAX in late-April, giving it one of the industry’s largest franchise footprints while dramatically expanding the reach of proprietary technology stacks.

Together, the deals signal a broader industry shift — one where brokerages increasingly resemble vertically integrated technology ecosystems designed to control agent workflows, transaction infrastructure, consumer engagement and financial services.

Compass hopes to earn tech adoption

Rory Golod — president of business and platform growth at Compass — said the company believes technology adoption must be earned rather than imposed.

“We’re actually excited by the fact that we have to earn the business of all of our agents and our affiliates,” he told HousingWire. “Ultimately, that creates the competition to push you to build a viable product and one that they want to use. Part of the problem in our industry is that, on one hand, you have tools that agents have been forced to use like the MLS. Therefore, when you’re forced to use something and there’s a monopoly around it, there is no incentive to improve it and make the quality better.”

Compass plans to integrate its software infrastructure across Anywhere’s legacy franchise brands while avoiding direct Compass branding on those systems.

“Everything will be branded as their company and their brand,” Golod said. “So, it’ll be the same functionality, but will be branded completely as them.”

The company’s Compass One platform was designed to unify lead generation, marketing, transaction management and commission processing into a single operational system.

Golod said Compass is now extending those capabilities to franchise-level operations.

“The average franchisee and affiliate is also using dozens of systems to run their business,” he said. “So, we’re really excited to be able to bring that down to one system.”

Golod argued that consolidation only proves useful for all parties involved in real estate transactions when technology meaningfully improves the experience.

“With these companies that are joining together, they need the experience for their agents, and ultimately for their clients, to be elevated, where they can’t look at themselves in the mirror and say, ‘What I have today is better than what I had a year ago or two years ago,'” he said. “Ultimately, that’s the measure for success.”

eXp, NextHome build a ‘multi-model’ structure

At eXp, executives are pursuing a different type of integration challenge.

The company built its business around a cloud-native, borderless brokerage model — while NextHome developed a franchise system rooted in locally owned brokerages.

Leo Pareja, CEO of eXp Realty, said the two organizations discovered deep philosophical and operational alignment early in discussions.

“This happened very organically,” Pareja said. “[NextHome co-CEO James Dwiggins] and I met on stages, some HousingWire stages, and we were very aligned, and quickly realized that we had very similar viewpoints about transparency, about the consumer and about what to do with data.

“James’s company is fully virtual, from the entire leadership and support staff. Forty-two percent of his franchises are completely virtual and/or leverage shared space, which is exactly what we do.”

The acquisition creates what executives describe as a “multi-model platform” capable of serving agents at different stages of their careers.

Dwiggins said the combined structure allows agents to move between cloud brokerage models, team structures and franchise ownership without leaving the broader ecosystem.

“Agents have different points in their career,” he said. “They can start with the company. They can work a certain way. They may want to become a broker. If you look at where we are from a company perspective, we want to be able to hit them at the different points in the life cycle of their business.”

Pareja said the acquisition also allows eXp to better serve larger operators who previously struggled to fit within a purely virtual brokerage environment.

“In the four years I’ve been interacting with folks considering eXp, I can tell you I’ve had dozens upon dozens of folks who, for as much as I want to champion the cloud brokerage, they have six offices, 400 agents and 30 full-time staff people,” Pareja said. “They’re like, ‘Look, we can’t make it work. It’s not for us.’” The acquisition of NextHome gives those real estate professionals a way to make it work.

Real leans into AI, vertical integration

Among the industry’s latest consolidators, The Real Brokerage may be making the clearest argument that long-term value increasingly resides in proprietary software infrastructure — rather than traditional franchise scale alone.

Discussing Real’s acquisition of REMAX during the company’s first-quarter earnings call, Real CEO Tamir Poleg framed the deal primarily as a technology expansion opportunity.

The company’s ecosystem includes its reZEN operating platform, Leo AI assistant and the Real Wallet fintech platform.

“When you have reZEN as your single system of record, Leo AI helping you run your business every day, Real Wallet getting you paid faster with access to lines of credit and integrated title and mortgage services, all inside one ecosystem, it’s really hard to walk away from that,” Poleg said.

Real executives argued the company’s technology stack was built long before AI became the industry’s dominant narrative.

“We didn’t have to pivot to AI,” Poleg said. “We didn’t white-label our way into fintech. We’ve built the infrastructure transaction by transaction, agent by agent, year after year because we knew that someday technology would catch up to the vision. That day has arrived. With the REMAX transaction, we will soon have the network and the reach to bring it to life at a scale that we believe can transform how people buy and sell homes.

“You cannot vibe code this. You have to dream it, build it and earn it.”

AI as the integration layer

Across all three acquisitions, executives increasingly describe AI and automation as the connective tissue capable of unifying multiple brokerage models while reducing operational complexity.

At eXp, Pareja said the company has developed extensive back-office automation systems capable of managing transaction compliance and operational workflows at scale.

He said those systems automate compliance reviews, contract analysis and operational tasks that historically required significant manual labor.

“It’s the stuff we built to check compliance with [regulators] and scan contracts and read and auto-[populate],” Pareja said. “Over time, with thoughtfulness, we will take some of that and introduce it to the broker-owners to augment their world and give them more margin.”

Real is similarly betting heavily on AI-powered consumer engagement.

“We also see significant opportunity to utilize our AI-powered consumer home search portal, HeyLeo, to further nurture and monetize the 1 million annual leads generated across remax.com and remax.ca,” Poleg said.

Real Chief Operating Officer Jenna Rozenblat said HeyLeo already handles extensive buyer interactions using live MLS data integration.

“We are seeing many client conversations with HeyLeo running to 10, 15, even 20-plus messages covering property details, neighborhoods, schools and ownership costs,” she said. “These are typical high-quality buyer interactions that our agents no longer have to manually respond to around the clock.”

Post-acquisition tech plans

Recent acquisitions also reflect growing competition over who controls listings, transaction data and consumer relationships in residential real estate.

Golod argued that existing listing portals and MLS systems already wield excessive influence over how homes are marketed and discovered.

“I think the concern is with Zillow and MLSs, where they have consolidated too much power,” he said. “They are monopolies, and they are restricting how homes can be marketed to consumers, certainly, and to the detriment of agent. It’s the lack of competition.

“I see us empowering agents and affiliates and franchise owners with technology and better businesses as a way to create competition in the market, competition among agents and competition among companies.”

Pareja emphasized that technology integration isn’t paving the way for redundant roles at eXp or NextHome.

“We are not forecasting synergies,” he said. “We bought a growing small platform, small compared to us, on purpose, because it’s to be scaled. We brought over every single employee of NextHome and plan on growing the platform, not synergizing the platform, which is what you’re seeing with the other legacy acquisitions.

“What we believe is we’ve operationalized transactions at scale.”

Ongoing industry consolidation suggests that future brokerage competition may center less on traditional franchise scale and more on which companies can build the most integrated technology ecosystem — one capable of managing agents, consumers, transactions, payments and data inside a single connected platform.