Leading firms are employing different strategies — M&As, growth-oriented platforms, agent incentives — to fortify and expand their already-dominant positions.
Editor’s note: Since 2006, the Swanepoel Trends Report has provided in-depth research and analysis to help leaders understand the forces shaping residential real estate. This exclusive series of excerpts highlights each trend featured in the 2026 report, which was released in November 2025.
Brokerage Consolidation — Redefining Real Estate Competition: The brokerage consolidation trend isn’t new, but the pace and magnitude of growth has accelerated, increasingly transforming the real estate industry — a shift underscored in 2025 by the mega-merger of Compass and Anywhere.
The following excerpt, taken from T3 Sixty’s 2026 Trends Report, outlines the two primary growth strategies that have enabled a handful of large firms to dominate the residential real estate landscape.
Approaching 2026, increasingly, ambitious leaders with bold plans and significant financial resources at their disposal dominate the brokerage market at the national level.
The number of brokerages in the US — estimated to be in the 100,000 range — may not have meaningfully changed in recent years, but a more significant consolidation has occurred: sales have increasingly consolidated among the nation’s largest brokerages.
The change in sales volume market share of the US’s 10 largest brokerages from 2017 through 2024 illustrates the trend. The top 10 cohort nearly doubled its US sales volume share to over a quarter (27.2 percent) from 14.3 percent, based on T3 Sixty data and using NAR existing home sales as a reference.
Acquisitions
Acquisitions, primarily of large companies, have driven the consolidation of market share among many of the US’s top brokerages.
The industry’s consolidation through acquisition trend started decades ago, when, in the 1990s, the precursors to both Anywhere Real Estate and HomeServices of America launched with massive amounts of funding and an aggressive vision to consolidate the industry. They both went on acquisition sprees in the 2000s and early 2010s. Other companies and investors jumped in seeing the opportunity to build massive brokerages and enterprises.
Compass, which became the US’s largest brokerage by sales volume in 2023, epitomizes this acquisition spree. Backed by significant investments from venture capital firm Softbank, the firm bought nine of the nation’s 100 largest brokerages by January 2025.
Peerage Realty Partners, a division of Canada-based investment firm Peerage Capital Group, entered the US market in 2019 and with several acquisitions, primarily of large Sotheby’s International Realty affiliates, became a top 10 brokerage by 2023. That’s growth at a remarkable speed.
Of the 100 largest brokerages in 2018, over a quarter (27) have been acquired, predominantly by what have become the 10 largest brokerages in 2025.
The brokerage feeding frenzy and market concentration
