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Brad Inman kicked off the CEO Connect tract at Inman Connect Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Among bowls of lightly dressed, kale-Caesar salads and assorted rolls on industry trend-themed tables, an audience of C-level real estate, mortgage and technology executives sat down to hear Inman chat with Tamir Poleg, Real Brokerage founder and CEO.
The topic, adhered to slightly, was “scaled growth in stealth mode,” a reference to how Poleg managed to so broadly expand his brand’s tech-forward, remote brokerage model out from under the industry spotlight. No hiding now.
“Before the pandemic, we had 15 employees, then we started growing like crazy,” Poleg said. “We now have about 150 employees and 11,500 agents.”
Real is a fully remote real estate company, with its workers spread throughout the U.S. and Canada. Poleg, however, works from Israel. He meets with his management team in person four to six times per year.
“So, are you on fire?” Inman said. “Is that true?”
“We are on fire, we have more than 11,500 agents, two-and-a-half years ago we had about 1,000 agents,” Poleg said. “We had a board meeting this morning and probably grew revenue by 7x in the past three years, and we are cash-flow positive.”
Poleg insists that he admires what eXp has built and shared his company’s prospectus with its CEO Glenn Sanford before going public. But he never heard back. Inman reached out to eXp for comment and will update this story with additional comments.
“He built an amazing company that is changing lives in the industry,” Poleg said.
Still, he also told Inman that he isn’t competing with them from a personal or operational perspective.
“A lot of people compare Real with eXp because both companies are publicly traded, both companies adopted the marketing strategy of revenue share instead of paid advertising to attract agents.”
Poleg told his colleagues in the CEO Connect audience that there was a time when the company was pumping money into online advertising to recruit agents but realized the money would be better spent giving back to the agents.
“We built the company in the way we thought was right,” Poleg said.
Inman’s opening speech on day one of Inman Connect Las Vegas was about artificial intelligence, something on which Real is focused. Its internal AI app Leo was officially launched today, Aug. 8, Poleg said. The GPT-based (not ChatGPT) software assists Real agents with an array of day-to-day needs, marketing projects and communications within the company’s operating system.
Poleg compared his company’s goals to how Uber upended the taxi industry.
“The [taxi] driver had no incentive to make it a good drive for you. But Uber completely changed that, they drive more convenience, speed and transparency for consumers.”
Inman wasn’t totally buying it.
“If you’re ever really going to do anything about the agent delivering a better consumer experience, you gotta do something different than we’ve done in this industry,” Inman said.
Poleg said most agents think that consumers want things, such as better communication, better service or more options in homes.
“The reality is, all they want is a home,” Poleg said. “They don’t want a mortgage, a title company, they want a home. That’s what we need to deliver, a home, not a process that’s broken.”
Real acquired a mortgage company and a title company in 2022 and told the audience that the true, best experience for homebuyers should totally integrate those aspects of the transaction. They shouldn’t remain fragmented.
“You don’t care about your mortgage, you care about your monthly payment.”
