REAL Broker vs. Keller Williams: An In-Depth Comparison
When I left the Air Force after 11 years to start my career as a real estate agent, there was only one company I even considered joining and that was Keller Williams Realty. Before I even got my real estate license, I had already read Gary’s books The One Thing and The Millionaire Real Estate Agent and really admired Gary’s leadership. 5 Years later, I made the decision to leave Keller Williams and join REAL Broker.
Being that I have spent significant time at both companies, I think I’m uniquely qualified to detail the major differences between the two of them to help you make your decision on what brokerage is best for you and your business.
In this article, I am going to do a side-by-side comparison of these two great brokerages. We are going to compare their:
Business models
Cost & Fees
Stock Programs
Training
Revenue/Profit Share Programs
Coaching
Keller Williams VS REAL Broker Business Models
Keller Williams Realty
KW was founded in Austin Texas in 1983. It was one of the first brokerages to adopt the real estate team model and the brokerage franchise model. Currently, there are about 1,100 Keller Williams franchises in America, and KW is the largest brokerage in America by agent count. At one point KW had almost 200,000 agents globally. That number has declined to about 160,000 agents globally as of the end of 2023.
Keller Williams is a privately owned company with Gary Keller being the largest shareholder.
Keller Williams also launched MAPS, which is their paid coaching and training division. MAPS accounts for a large portion of Keller Williams's income so much so that at some point they stopped identifying as a real estate company and started calling themselves a “training and education company that sells real estate”.
Kelly Williams's business model largely revolves around selling KW franchises to brokers and upselling its agents on coaching and training.
REAL Broker
REAL was established in 2014 in New York City by Tamir Poleg who is still the CEO today. REAL is a publicly traded company and is largely owned by the agents in the company.
REAL Broker is available in all 50 states, DC, and 4 provinces in Canada and at the time of this writing is at about 12,000 agents. REAL’s agent count has almost doubled every year for the past 3 years straight.
REAL is not a franchise like Keller Williams but instead a cloud brokerage. Each state has one or more brokers who work for REAL and are in charge of reviewing all agent contracts and supporting agents with local questions. Agents anywhere in that state can then join REAL and work directly with the company, not for a franchise owner.
REAL operates on thin profit margins but as of Q2 2023, real is profitable and has $0 Debt. In 2023, REAL also launched REAL Mortgage and REAL Title which are both also cloud-based and leverage much of the same technology. In the beginning of 2024, REAL is also launching their REAL Wallet with a debit and credit card for their agents.
REAL Mortgage, REAL Title, and the REAL Wallet all serve as additional streams of income into the REAL Broker business model.
KW VS REAL Cost and Fees
Keller Williams Realty
KW has a 70/30 split with their agents and also takes a 6% KW Royalty fee on every transaction until you pay them $3,000 a year. So your split at Keller Williams is really 64/36 until your franchise feed is paid.
Each individual Keller Williams franchise owner is free to determine what their caps will be for their agents. One KW office I worked for charged a $24,000 a year cap while another one I worked at charged a $28,000 a year cap.
Franchise owners are also free to charge additional fees such as
Desk Fees
Printer Fees
Transaction Fees
Monthly Fees
and more
As an example, when I was with Keller Williams I used to pay $500 a month for an office at my Brokerage and used to have to pay a $389 transaction fee on all transactions.
With the Keller Williams model, the cost to be an agent is left up to the franchise owners and can fluctuate between offices. They can also fluctuate within an office. It is common for brokerages to offer some agents or team leaders big discounts on caps and fees to attract them into their office which they do not offer to everyone. We call these “sweetheart deals” in the industry.
REAL Broker
Because REAL is not a franchise, their fees and caps are the same for every agent in every state.
85/15 split with a $12,000 cap.
$750 annual fee which they collect by deducting $250 from your first three transactions of the year.
$30 E&O Insurance fee on all transactions
$285 transaction fee AFTER you cap. This gets reduced to $129 after you hit Elite Agent
KW VS REAL Stock Awards
Keller Williams
Keller WIlliams Realty is privately owned largely by Gary Keller and they do not give their agents any stock awards.
REAL Broker
REAL is publicly traded and largely owned by the agents who are in it. In addition to being able to just buy the stock on the open market, REAL has 4 ways it gives agents free stock in the company.
The first is by capping when you cap REAL currently will give you 150 shares of stock in the company.
Second is agent attraction. When an agent names you as a sponsor, in addition to receiving revenue share, REAL will give you 75 shares of stock when that agent closes their first transaction.
Third is the stock purchase plan bonuses. If you buy stock directly out of your commission with their stock purchase plan, REAL will give you up to 20% bonus stock on top of your purchase for free.
Fourth is the REAL has their Elite Agent Production Award. If you hit the production requirements for Elite Agent, REAL will give you $16,000 worth of free stock in the company.
Fith is the Elite Agent Cultural Award If you hit Elite Agent and also are active in the REAL community or teach classes, you will receive their Cultural Award as well which is another $8,000 in free stock in the company. So total, this is $24,000 in stock.
Personal Option
I feel like their really is a difference in the culture, community and quality of training being at a company that is largely owned by the agents vs being at a company only largly owned by a single billionaire and where the agents do not have any ownership.
Not only does giving agents stock awards help set up their future for success and potentially retirement some day but it also changes their perspective of the company. It goes from “I work for this company” to “I’m an owner in this company and helping grow it”.
KW VS REAL Training
Keller Williams
Most of the included training you will receive at KW is by the agents within the market center who provide training in exchange for getting their caps or fees reduced by the market center. Most of this training, such as their Ignite series, is based off Gary’s book The Millionaire Real Estate Agent.
KW does have a platform for videos, many of these videos are also available publicly on YouTube. Most of the free training you will receive will be in-person training in your market center.
In my experience, sometimes your broker may provide training or they may have the occasional lender or title company teach a class. I did also sometimes see people outside of the market center teaching classes but most of the time they are doing this to try and sell you a product or service or recruit you as an agent to their team.
Keller Williams does off paid coaching and classes but these are not included in the cap and fees you are already paying.
REAL Broker
At REAL, most of your training is provided by REAL’s Elite Agents who are located around the US and Canada. REAL Currently has over 2,000+ online classes you will get instant access to in the REAL Academy and this collection of classes is always growing. These classes are exclusive to REAL and not available anywhere else.
REAL also has over 30+ live streams every week you can join in on and over two dozen recurring masterminds where agents hop on video calls and mastermind about specific topics like the YouTube Mastermind I host monthly or the Agent Attraction Mastermind I personally host weekly.
REAL incentivizes its top agents to teach classes with our Elite Agent Award of $24,000 a year in free stock. Many agents who don’t hit Elite Agent each year, also teach and give back to the community. These agents are incentivized because they own stock in the company, receive revenue share, or just support the community.
Personal Opinion
There are some interesting pros and cons to the two companies’ approaches to training. With Keller Williams, if most of the training you receive from your brokerage is from other agents within your market center, there is a financial disincentive for them to teach their best material because you are in their market and directly competing against them. By receiving training from agents around the country outside of your market, you remove this disincentive.
With REAL Broker’s approach, you receive virtual training from agents around the US and Canada and these agents are incentivized to provide the best training they can because they own stock in the company and receive revenue share.
Another advantage is access to a much wider range of training with REALs model. Let’s say you want to learn more about YouTube or client events or geographical farming but there is no one in your market center who knows anything about those topics, with a KW franchise you simply don’t get access to that training. By receiving training from all agents in the entire company, you get access to a much wider range of topics and classes.
Having all the classes online vs in person can also be seen as a benefit. It makes the training more convenient, and accessible on mobile devices so you can listen to a class or mastermind in your car while driving.
KW Profit Share vs REAL Rev Share
Keller Williams
KW was one of the first real estate brokerages to reward agents for helping grow the company. They call their program “profit share” and if you recruit an agent to Keller Williams you may get a percentage of the profit of the KW market center that the agent works in. I say “may” because receiving a profit share is not guaranteed if the market center is not profitable.
Keller Williams does not have a fixed amount you receive for an agent but instead the market center splits a small portion of their profits. Depending on how profitable the market center, they will either pay out 25%, 35% or 50% of their profits to their agents in profit share. So your portion depends on how profitable the market center is, if at all, and how much the agent you sponsored contributed to that market center in terms of commissions.
KW’s profit share goes down 7 tiers. So if you bring in an agent, you will get a percentage of profit share off any agent they bring in and then any agent that agent brings in goes down 7 levels.
REAL Broker
REAL Broker’s business model involves giving their entire marketing budget to the agents who help grow the company word of mouth and one agent at a time. So REAL spends $0 on advertising or hiring recruiters, instead that budget goes to the agents in the form of revenue share.
For any agent you attract to the company and who names you as a sponsor, REAL will give 5% of every commission they earn until they cap. So once they pay the full $12k cap to REAL, you would have earned $4,000. This repeats every year they are at the company.
REAL’s revenue share does go down 5 tiers and they follow a simple 5,4,3,2,1 model.
So if your tier 1 agent brings in an agent, that agent is in your tier 2 and you can earn 4% of every commission they earn until they cap. For tier 3 agents you will receive 3%, tier 4 you will receive 2% and for tier 5 you will receive 1%.
There are some requirements to unlock your tier 2 through 5 benefits. You need to have a certain number of producing agents in your tier 1 in order to unlock each subsequent tier of revenue share.
Personal Opinion
One challenge with Keller Williams profit share model is that even if you brought in a rock star agent, if the market center is not profitable, you will not receive any profit share.
Another challenge is that you are trusting your market center to report profits accurately. Unfortunately, when I was there we would hear stories of brokers adding business expenses to reduce their profits on paper so they would not have to pay out as much profit share to the agents. For example, you would often hear of brokers pre-paying office rent for several months in order to show up as not profitable on paper.
With REAL Broker’s revenue share model, you are paid on every transaction the agent closes until they cap. The revenue share program is also easier to understand with their simple 5 tier structure and is way more profitable for the agents.
KW vs REAL Coaching
Keller Williams
KW primarily offers two forms of coaching programs for their agents. First, they often have a “productivity coach” in the office. This is a good option for many newer agents. These are primarily in group coaching environment with some one-on-one to help set goals. This option cost the agent nothing upfront but they do sign an agreement to pay their coach a % of any commission they earn, including for a time period after they leave productivity coaching. Most offices only have 1 productivity coach per office, many smaller offices have 0.
KW also owns a company called MAPS Coaching. This company offers paid classes and one-on-one coaching. MAPS coaching is not exclusive to KW but the majority of their clients are KW. MAPS coaching typically costs $1,000 for 4x 30 minute calls a month. Their most popular class is called BOLD and costs $800.
REAL Broker
REAL broker does not offer paid coaching programs. They do however have a Mentorship Program where any agent in the company can apply to be a mentor. If approved, they fill out a profile on what their strengths and background are and how much they would charge to be an agent’s mentor. Mentors can charge any % they choose but they are typically between 25% and 50%. The mentee pays this percentage of their commission only on 3 transactions and then have the option to continue the mentorship program or not.
The mentorship program at REAL offers an additional stream of income for many agents.
Personal Opinion
Keller Williams's coaching and training program is a critical part to their financial success. Their business model is to get agents to join and then upsell them on coaching and training. I personally saw this as a conflict of interest and felt very pressured by my market center leader and broker to sign up for many of these classes. The BOLD class was once a year and they would literally call you on your phone and try to pressure you to sign up.
I appreciate that this is not part of REAL’s model. I do see their mentorship program as an added value and an additional stream of revenue for many agents who enjoy helping new agents.
REAL vs KW Final Thoughts
Both companies pride themselves on culture, technology, and training. After spending the first 5 years of my career at Keller Williams Realty, I decided to move my business to REAL Broker.
For me, the REAL Broker culture resonated with me the most. It’s a fun culture focused on collaboration over competition. The culture is also focused on innovation and technology which is something I really appreciate.
REAL’s award-winning technology has fundamentally changed how I run my business on a day-to-day basis and streamlined many processes for me. I literally use the agent app on a daily basis to check on my transactions and multiple streams of income.
Next Steps
If you're interested in learning more about REAL Broker and seeing if it’s a good fit for your business as well, I’d be happy to hop on a 1-on-1 video call with you to talk more and answer any questions you might have. You can schedule a video call here.
