eXp rides housing boom with $31M in profits

UPDATED, March 11, 2021, 6:58 p.m.: As traditional brokerage firms scrambled to go virtual last spring, eXp Realty didn’t miss a beat. The cloud-based brokerage maintained “continuous operations,” said CEO Glenn Sanford.

The result was eXp’s most profitable year ever, with $31 million in net income, compared to a $9.6 million loss in 2019. Its 2020 revenue also soared 84 percent to a record $1.8 billion, up from $979 million a year prior.

Founded in 2002, eXp operates in a Sim City-like virtual world. It has grown rapidly by offering agents 100 percent commission after they hit a certain threshold. Over the past year, it’s reported back-to-back quarters of record profits, in part because it has a fraction of expenses owed by its incumbents, who are saddled with brick-and-mortar offices.

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Virtual brokerage eXp notches most profitable quarter ever

In 2020, the firm added 15,000 agents for a total of 41,313, up 63 percent year over year. It also launched in five countries — France, Portugal, Mexico, India, and South Africa — and added a commercial arm in 26 U.S. states in 2020.

With few apparent obstacles in eXp’s path, it’s not apparent it will gain market share in luxury markets or in New York City, where it launched in 2019.

On Thursday, eXp said sales volume soared 89 percent year over year to $72.2 billion. Along with the rest of the housing market, things heated up in the fourth quarter, when sales spiked 123 percent year over year to $24.6 billion.

UPDATE: The headline has been corrected to indicate that eXp made $31 million in net income.