Real Brokerage’s acquisition of REMAX has raised some eyebrows, but the bigger questions revolve around franchise disputes and cannibalization risks.
Rumors have been swirling for months that REMAX is ripe for an acquisition. The company was heavily in debt, and the story no longer resonated with the capital markets.
The company never went bankrupt, but as Russ Cofano, co-founder and president of Alloy Advisors, says, the longer this spiral continues, the harder it is to recover from it.
So when Real Brokerage made its move, the deal was surprising on the surface. But if you dig a little deeper, that may not be the case.
“Real and REMAX could not be more different as companies,” Cofano told Inman. He pointed out that Real’s situation has unique pressures. Growth is slowing, and the stock is down about 50% over the past year. Operating as a publicly traded company means you need to show growth. “REMAX may not be a perfect fit, but it can move the needle,” Cofano says.
“Could these two systems cannibalize each other?”
However, the structural differences between the two companies are important. In Real’s organization, the primary customer is the agent. REMAX involves broker owners and franchisees. These are two completely different relationships, Cofano said, which immediately begs the question: “How is Real creating value for its franchisees?”
“REMAX is not growing its base and Real’s growth is slowing,” Cofano said. “Just because these two companies are combined doesn’t mean that automatically changes.”
According to Cofano, there is also the issue of channel competition. REMAX’s mission is to help broker owners succeed. Real, on the other hand, built a model around supporting agents through recruitment and revenue sharing.
“Real cannot simply integrate its own system into REMAX’s system,” Cofano said. “Could these two systems cannibalize each other?”
As Cofano points out, merging the two companies reveals tensions. If Real starts pushing its agent-direct model into the REMAX ecosystem, broker owners may find it hard to find a partner. They will be aware of the threat.
Why would an agent stay within the REMAX franchise when Real is dangling revenue sharing and a direct relationship with local franchise owners in the middle? Without anyone intending for it, the REMAX franchise network could become a recruiting pipeline for Real’s own model.
That’s the cannibalization risk Cofano is referring to.
REMAX’s broker owners will be closely monitoring Real’s leadership for any signs that agents are being steered toward Real’s mothership. Once that perception takes hold, maintaining the franchise becomes an issue. And the issue of franchise retention is an existential issue for companies that have simply paid to acquire a franchise network.
Technology migration adds further complexity. REMAX broker owners and agents are highly independent, and Real cannot take a coercive approach to bring them into its technology stack, Cofano said. They need to lead with carrots, not sticks.
As for what this means for Real’s agent in particular, Cofano doesn’t think there is a clear upside. “I don’t think Real’s agent will benefit from this deal,” he said.
Consolidated pool is shrinking
Cofano zoomed out and said the combination of Real and REMAX is one of the few deals that could have this kind of impact on the residential real estate industry. He added that eXp probably considered acquiring REMAX at some point, but nothing came of it.
EXp presents its own challenges, Cofano points out. Growth has stalled there, too, at least based on the headline numbers.
EXp World Holdings ended 2025 with 83,060 agents worldwide. This was about the same as the previous year’s 82,980. But CEO Leo Pareja cast that stability as a competitive victory. With NAR membership declining 4 percent industry-wide, Pareja told investors during the fourth quarter 2025 earnings call that eXp is “outpacing NAR’s decline by 25 percent” in the United States.
On the financial front, eXp’s full-year 2025 revenue rose 4% to $4.8 billion, but its net loss increased slightly from $21.3 million to $22.7 million. Cash on hand was $124.5 million, up from $113.6 million in the prior year period.
Cofano said companies such as HomeServices of America and Howard Hanna are potential acquisition targets in the current wave of consolidation. He said HomeServices is an interesting case, with Chris Kelly taking over as CEO in April 2025, and reports circulating that Compass was in talks to acquire the company in March 2025 (something HomeServices flatly denies).
But the pool of innovative deals is rapidly shrinking. “There aren’t many more deals that generate the kind of buzz that Real-REMAX does,” Cofano said.
It remains to be seen whether the wave of consolidation is completely over. But the real question now is which companies can actually execute strategies to win through mergers and acquisitions, Cofano said.
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