Mark Willis, speaking at a house party for the first time since returning as CEO of Keller Williams last year, called on brokers to rise up and take down Anywhere, the world’s largest real estate franchise.
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2023 is a mix of roses and thorns for Keller Williams, with the Texas-based franchisee easily earning multiple “best” awards in leadership, company culture, agency production and technology. The company earned a spot on the “Best” list while being caught in two landmark buyer’s brokerage committees, which the company settled for $70 million on February 1.
The company’s agent count remained stable, with 162,000 agents in the United States and Canada, completing 895,000 transactions valued at $379 billion. Meanwhile, Keller Williams Worldwide’s 18,000 agents completed 87,000 transactions valued at $17 billion.
Mark Willis
Although the company outperforms the rest of the industry in agent growth, according to National Association of Realtors statistics, Keller Williams CEO Mark Willis said the Texas-based company Franchisees in the state are seeing flat agent growth in 2023 — a sobering statistic for a company known for its solidity. Recruitment and retention.
“KW family, our growth is flat, we’re not gaining additional market share,” he said in a state-of-the-company speech at the first KW family gathering in eight years. “I remember a time, and I know a lot of you remember too, when we were routinely outperforming the industry year after year.”
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Willis attributed the lackluster growth to rising mortgage rates, deteriorating affordability, low inventory and a number of other macroeconomic headwinds that dampened sales throughout 2023. The record growth of new brokers over the past few years doesn’t help either; resulting in an extremely competitive market.
“Now I can stand here and I can talk about the model that allows us to thrive in this market. Because believe me, they do,” he said. “Our economic model, our operating model, our organizational model absolutely differentiates us from every competitor that we have.”
“Not to mention all the wonderful education we get through KW and our amazing technology platform,” he added. “But if I’m honest with you, it’s not enough. For a company as mature as ours, we need to do more.”
Willis echoed insights from an interview with Inman days before the conference, asking agents to “reject the status quo” and regain an “insatiable desire” to become trusted real estate experts for buyers and sellers. He also called on leadership to meet a target of recruiting 100,000 agents this year, which would account for one in five new agents expected to be licensed in 2024.
“To all the leaders out there, I want to make it clear that the first priority is to be 1000 percent focused on growth. Growth is the lifeblood of our business,” he said. “KW family, if 500,000 new agents enter this industry this year,
We should recruit at least 100,000 people. “
Willis said Keller Williams’ strength lies in its growing empire of affiliated education through Coursera and Kaplan, as well as its broad proprietary technology platform, KW Command.
Chris Cox
Keller Williams chief technology officer Chris Cox joined Willis on stage to announce several upgrades to KW Command and education platform KW Connect, including the addition of a ChatGPT-style chatbot that will debut later this year.
“Imagine this. What if we could take all the wisdom of ‘Millionaire Realtor’ or ‘SHIFT’ and all those other scripts and put them into one giant library through our version of ChatGPT?” he said. . What if we could provide this information in the form of a chatbot in Command and Connect and make it easy for our agents and teams to have all this information at their fingertips? Well, that’s what we’ve been working on. “
“Artificial intelligence is only good if it makes you smarter,” he said. “If it doesn’t actually save you time and help you make more money, it’s not worth it.”
Cox also touted the addition of new proprietary tools on KW.com that can predict how many buyers and sellers will enter a given market, as well as new collaboration tools such as affordability calculators and home valuation tools. Willis and Cox say all of these upcoming tools will be key to getting KW back on track.
“We’ve developed technology by agents for agents, and we can do anything to reimagine how we work, how we sell, and ultimately how we grow,” Cox said.
If all goes as planned, Willis said KW expects to tie or surpass New Jersey-based real estate giant Anywhere in market share based on the number of agents.
“We have another Goliath to topple. Our Keller Williams single brand will be bigger than Anywhere’s seven co-brands. It’s within reach.” His words received applause and cheers from the audience. “We are just two points away from beating Goliath, who represents seven household names.
“We have brand recognition that is second to none and we will prove it with more agents, more logos, more market share and more referrals,” he added. “I believe we will do that when we become the best culture ever. Our destiny is to become the largest real estate entity on the planet.”
