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LPT Realty achieves growth by tailoring compensation models to the career stage of its real estate agents, from newbies who get the most out of a flat-fee model to superstars who like a traditional split.
“What that creates is [that] we actually have alignment with our team leaders,” said LPT CEO Robert Palmer. “Everybody wins, and it’s led to massive growth.”
The company applies a similar mindset to how it builds teams. Some brokerages have rules that disincentivize agents to join teams because they make more money if they stay solo. Others have restrictions that prevent agents already at the brokerage from joining teams. However, across the industry, that is changing as the team model evolves.
Teams have grown not only in size but also in complexity, often incorporating marketing, tech, and admin support to streamline operations and boost productivity. Some now operate at a scale that blurs the line between team and brokerage — coining terms like “teamerage.”
For LPT Realty, despite being just three years old, the firm is already well represented on the 2025 Team Rankings from RealTrends Verified.
Among mega teams — those with more than 20 agents — LPT has four teams in the top 25 in sides, led by Big Block in San Diego with 2,322 sides and 613 agents.
Upstarts like LPT are building on the foundation laid in the late 1990s by Keller Williams, when founder Gary Keller published Millionaire Real Estate Agent. The book outlined ways of forming teams and how they can help agents grow their business.
At the same time, people like Tom Ferry developed coaching strategies that team leaders began to employ, a function that’s a natural fit for a team. Teams started small — just two or three agents, and as simple as a mother-son duo — but by the late 2000s teams became more pervasive and larger in size.
“The teams trend really became noticeable in that time frame,” said RealTrends founder and HW media senior advisor Steve Murray. “The number didn’t explode. It grew here and there with agents wanting to form informal teams to share the workload or get a higher commission split.”
Technology = team progression
As technology in the real estate industry progressed, the personnel on teams began to expand to include positions to manage that technology, including executive assistants, transaction coordinators and marketing managers. Many brokerages now have in-house platforms to help teams organize.
As a result, teams have exploded, with both the number of teams and the size of them growing at an exponential rate.
Some teams have gotten so large that they include some of the functions of a brokerage, birthing the phrase “teamerage.” Some like Jason Mitchell Group (JMG), Mark Spain Real Estate and Robert Slack Real Estate are so big that it’s worth questioning whether they’re a proper team.
Murray says a key metric in separating a team from a brokerage is the split. For example, a brokerage might implement a 80/20 split with its agents, whereas a team would take a higher split of 50/50.
To say that’s worked is an understatement. JMG (10,279), Mark Spain (9,508) and Robert Slack (3,933) are the top three teams in sides on RealTrends’ team rankings.
The idea of a team continues to evolve, as they’re adding new functions and entering into different arrangements that streamline leads and operations.
The teamerage model
LPT’s Palmer says the brokerage is expanding through what he calls “Teamerage 2.0,” where instead of a team leaving a legacy brokerage to become a brokerage, a brokerage joins LPT to operate like a team.
Chris Speicher is lead for two teams called the Spiker Group at two different brokerages, one in Maui with Coldwell Banker and the other on the east coast with the Real Brokerage, though he notes it’s a special circumstance related to the wildfires that devastated Maui in 2023.
Indiana-based Hundley Group with Compass led all small teams in sides in 2024 with a whopping 981. That might seem metaphysically impossible with just two agents on staff, but the team has an arrangement with a leading homebuilder in the area that provides a constant firehose of leads.
“It’s very operational and systematized,” said Erin Hundley. “We got over 50 listings in one week that we needed to enter. We’re really entering the listings from a marketing perspective but we are intertwined throughout the process, so we have to be very familiar with it. It is a lead generator for us.”
For all the innovation with teams, it’s still the OG that dominates the space — Keller Williams. While the raw size of the company gives them an advantage, its presence in the RealTrends rankings is ubiquitous.
Of the top 63 small teams on the rankings, Keller Williams accounts for 38%. The numbers are similar for medium teams (43%), large teams (27%) and mega teams (24%).
When asked by HousingWire where things might be headed with teams, sources had a familiar answer to any question about the future — artificial intelligence.
Speicher has consulted for a number of software companies and is currently talking to AI companies about how their systems can help. He believes the technology has great potential in helping agents develop leads. However, he believes current options haven’t gotten to that point yet.
“What I want AI to do is say here is your action item, and here’s what you should say [to leads] when you reach out to them,” he said. “No matter how good a CRM is and or no matter how much time my team can dedicate to nurturing leads, they’re on the road all day. Things are going to fall through the cracks, and I need something to help those agents who are busy to not have their stuff fall through the cracks.”
The real estate industry is undergoing a transformation as teams, once informal partnerships, evolve into sophisticated, scaled operations rivaling traditional brokerages. Flexible compensation models tailored to agents’ career stages and supportive team structures are fueling this growth, with upstarts and legacy firms alike embracing the model.
Legacy players like Keller Williams still dominate team rankings, but newcomers are quickly gaining ground. As AI and tech platforms become more integrated, the next wave of innovation is focused on automation, lead conversion, and operational efficiency, pushing the boundaries of what a real estate team can be.
