REMAX: REAL Hope in the Cloud?

The Real Brokerage is acquiring RE/MAX Holdings.

A lot of people will make this about transaction volume, interest rates, or the housing market slowing.

I don’t think that’s the story.

This isn’t about housing cycles. It’s about who wins the agent.

The Asset: Agent Relationships

I wasn’t here for it, but in 1973 Denver, Dave Liniger and Gail Liniger built one of the best recruiting machines this industry has ever seen.

It attracted a certain type of person. Independent, productive, and more successful than the average agent. That wasn’t an accident. The model was built for them.

And those agents still matter. That’s good news for you, dear real estate agent.

If they didn’t, we’d already be in a world where people just go straight to AI and transact. They don’t. This is still a relationship business. Trust still matters. Who you know still matters.

The market slowed. That’s true. But that’s not new.

What’s new is what agents expect in return for where they hang their license. More control, more flexibility, better economics, and less reliance on the brokerage to provide everything.

That’s what changed.

And when the market tightens, recruiting gets harder and retention gets harder, and the gap between models gets exposed.

That’s why now.

Not because the model stopped working, but because something else (non-franchise, non-office) started working better.

There’s another piece to this that’s easy to miss.

International Growth

RE/MAX wasn’t growing where the fight was happening … here in the US.

They’re in over 100 countries and that part of the model still works. You can expand a brand globally and continue adding agents. That machine is still intact and, in a lot of ways, still very healthy.

But the pressure isn’t coming from overseas. It’s coming from the storm cloud, here in the US.

The Real Brokerage was built with this cloud in mind, and it’s also where the most competition for agents exists today.

So when you look at this deal, it starts to make more sense.

RE/MAX brings the global footprint. Real brings a model that’s winning the recruiting conversation in the markets that matter most right now.

That’s the gap this deal is filling.

But REAL isn’t just buying an overseas brand. It’s the relationships those agents have built over years, sometimes decades. Those relationships come from closings, referrals, life events, and all the small moments that add up over time into trust.

When real estate insiders ask “Why do this deal”, that’s the part people are missing.

Denver real estate will miss RE/MAX, and this feels like the end of a real estate era.

The Loss of ReMax Hurts

They already sold the office building in the Tech Center several years ago, so it’s hard to imagine operations staying here long term. The center of gravity will likely shift to Florida, where The Real Brokerage is based.

That matters.

RE/MAX wasn’t just a company here. It helped shape the kind of real estate tech community Denver became. Independent, a little scrappy, willing to try something new.

We started Revaluate here in part because of that. The agents, the investors, the operators, the conversations. There was a real ecosystem around it.

That doesn’t disappear overnight. But we’ve lost our anchor.

And when the anchor is pulled, things tend to drift. That’s probably what happens next – and that’s a bummer for our culture for sure.

I’d Like to Buy an “M” Please

The Real Brokerage trades on NASDAQ under the ticker REAX.

One letter off from REMAX.

Probably a coincidence. But it does feel a little symbolic.

Conclusion

There was a time when independence meant higher splits and less oversight, but you were still inside a system. That’s what changed.

Now independence looks like control over your tech, your data, and how you run your business.

The brokerage used to recruit the agent. Now the platform does.

And underneath all of it, the thing that hasn’t changed is what matters most. Relationships.

That’s what The Real Brokerage is buying. That’s what RE/MAX built. And that’s what every agent already has.

This isn’t the end. It’s another example of the shift in who controls the relationship. That’s the part most people are still underestimating.