Keller Williams market centers have shared more than $2 billion in profits with affiliated agents though the firm’s profit-sharing program, according to an announcement on Monday.
“We are thrilled to celebrate that over $2 billion in lifetime profit share has been distributed to our franchisee-affiliated agents, a milestone that underscores the profound impact of our vision,” Mark Willis, the CEO and president of KW, said in a statement. “This achievement is a quantifiable testament to our strong, growth-minded culture.”
From Jan. 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024 alone, Keller Williams said that its market centers have awarded more than $148 million in profits to associates.
Keller Williams officially launched its profit-sharing program in 1987. According to the announcement, each month “KW market center owners share roughly 50% of their businesses’ profits with their associates who help that business grow.”
“With profit share, we created a program for our franchisees that allows them to treat their real estate sales associates as their partners,” Gary Keller, the co-founder of KW, said in a statement. “Profit share allows associates to build their businesses inside our franchise model, which is as powerful as if they owned a brokerage themselves.”
The milestone comes after months of strife surrounding the firm’s profit-sharing program. In August 2023, KW announced that it was cutting its profit-share distribution for vested “former” KW agents — those who joined the company before April 1, 2020, and left for another brokerage — from 100% to 5%. Prior to this change, vested “former” agents benefited from a 100% profit-share distribution even after their departure.
But earlier this year, the impending changes to Keller Williams’ profit-sharing program, which were slated to go into effect this month, made the firm the target of more than a dozen class-action lawsuits filed by former KW agents.
In May, the brokerage announced that its International Association Leadership Council (IALC) had made the decision to rescind these changes. The lawsuits, however, are still pending.
Agents join the profit-sharing program by designating a sponsor when they join a market center. That sponsor then becomes part of the agent’s “profit share tree.”
Once the agent has begun contributing to the market center’s business by closing transactions, they “receive a portion of the market center’s profits, which will be attributed to the associates in their tree.” Keller Williams also allows associated to designate a beneficiary to receive their profit-share distributions upon their death.
