Keller Williams reports 25% surge in Q3 sales

Franchise firm’s agent count rose 2.7% in U.S. and Canada

Keller Williams' Josh Team and Gary Keller (Photos via Keller Williams; Keller Capital)
Keller Williams' Josh Team and Gary Keller (Photos via Keller Williams; Keller Capital)

Buoyed by the national housing rebound, Keller Williams’ third-quarter sales volume grew 25.4 percent year-over-year, hitting $127.5 billion, the company said Thursday.

The brokerage franchise saw a sharp drop in sales during the second quarter as the pandemic froze homebuying. But it’s since rebounded: The number of contracts inked during the third quarter was up 21.1 percent year-over-year. As of Sept. 30, listings were up 5.2 percent.

For Keller Williams agents outside the U.S., sales volume surged nearly 55 percent year-over-year to $1.8 billion, and signed contracts were up 38.2 percent year-over-year as of Sept. 30.

“Our agents experienced their most productive quarter ever in Q3,” Josh Team, the firm’s president, said in a statement. Despite the pandemic, he said the pace of sales was “unprecedented” as the firm rolled out tools to help agents adapt to new ways of doing business.

“We know we can’t expect things to go back to the way they were,” he added.

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Team said that Keller Williams agents outpaced national sales trends. According to the National Association of Realtors’ third-quarter report, closed transactions in the U.S. were up 12.8 percent year-over-year. In September, sales of previously owned homes rose to 6.5 million, a jump of 9.4 percent compared to August.

Based in Austin, Texas, Keller Williams is the largest brokerage franchise, with 173,327 agents worldwide. In the U.S. and Canada, it had 161,885 agents, up 2.7 percent compared to the second quarter.

In recent years, Keller Williams has shifted its focus to technology, saying it would invest $1 billion into tools to help agents. The company said Command, its CRM tool that launched last year, had 143,104 users as of Sept. 30, up 7.3 percent quarter-over-quarter.

During the third quarter, social media advertising tools netted its agents nearly 723,363 leads from Facebook and Instagram, roughly the same as the second quarter. The average cost per lead was $1.69.

In recent weeks, Keller Williams has been adjusting to a major change in its C-suite.

Last month, co-founder Gary Keller stepped down as CEO, with Josh Team, the company’s president, assuming his responsibilities. Keller served as CEO since 2019 but had long been the face of the brokerage. He is now serving as executive chairman of the board.