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Keller Williams punts on IPO rumors after breaking another sales record

While sales volume rose, brokerage closed fewer transactions than it did a year ago

Keller Williams punts on IPO rumors after breaking another sales record
Keller Williams president Marc King (Keller Williams)

Following more than a year of broken sales records, rumors have swirled that the world’s largest brokerage franchise by agent count is speeding toward an IPO.

After saying sales reached another high in the third quarter, Keller Williams has a response: Not yet.

“We understand there’s a lot of speculation,” said spokesperson Darryl Frost. “Right now, we are focused on creating alignment, scale and efficiencies across the KW ecosystem.”

In June, Carl Liebert, the CEO of Keller Williams’ holding company kwx, told Inman that there was “room and opportunity for kwx and Keller Williams to go do something big in the future,” but fell short of committing to an IPO.

The brokerage will instead focus on innovating and delivering to its customers at its current scale, while “keeping the agent at the center of the real estate experience,” Frost said on Wednesday.

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While total sales jumped to $150 billion, up from the previous record of $145 billion set in the second quarter and 17.7 percent higher than in the third quarter of last year, Keller Williams’ agents in the U.S. and Canada closed fewer transactions, down 0.8 percent year-over-year.

The company partially made up for that decline outside the U.S. and Canada, where agents closed 16,500 transactions in the third quarter, up 36.3 percent from this time in 2020. Those deals were worth $3.2 billion, up 74.5 percent from last year.
“Unprecedented for our times, the COVID shutdowns in late Q1 and in Q2 ’20 allowed for a significant influx of pent-up housing demand to hit our agents in Q3 of 2020,” said Jason Abrams, head of industry at kwx. The privately held firm doesn’t report net income.

Keller Williams added a net 3,590 agents in the quarter, down from the 4,277 in the prior quarter. As of Sept. 30, it is now home to 188,244 agents worldwide.

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On a year-to-date basis, Keller Williams agents closed 16 percent more transactions worth 39 percent more in value as of Sept. 30 than in the same period last year.

The brokerage saw 103,400 monthly active users on Command, its CRM tool, during the third quarter, down slightly from the second quarter when the tool surpassed 104,000 active monthly users, but up 30 percent from the third quarter of 2020.

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