Days after announcing it would be purchasing legacy franchisor REMAX for $880 million, ascendant tech-focused Real Brokerage announced strong financial results to kick off 2026, with agent count jumping 25% and revenues increasing sharply as company executives touted new opportunities from the acquisition.
Reporting Q1 earnings, with $465 million revenue (up 34% year-over-year) and 41,882 closed transactions (up 25%), Real CEO Tamir Poleg, who will be taking the reins of the combined companies when the REMAX deal closes, said that “the financials are compelling” for the merger.
“At its core, Real REMAX Group will unite an iconic real estate brand and franchise network with our innovative technology and the fastest-growing major public real estate brokerage,” Poleg told investors.
The acquisition, pairing a relatively new brokerage in Real—which has focused on having “technology do most of the work” as it leans into AI—with a legacy franchisor, seemed to surprise many observers. Poleg admitted that initial reactions from REMAX agents and brokers were “a little bit of a mixed excitement and surprise.”
“I think that naturally people don’t really like change. So at the beginning, there was a need to heavily communicate and provide them the background and how management looks at the combination of the two companies,” he said.
But asked multiple times by investors how the rank-and-file at both Real and REMAX reacted to the news, Poleg and other Real executives claimed that agents had many questions, but are now largely enthusiastic about the integration.
“We told them that nothing changes for now,” said Poleg. “It’s business as usual, obviously, but we also indicated that this combination will allow us to invest even more in growth, in technology, in more in just strengthening the value proposition, both on the Real side or on the Real model and on the REMAX model.”
The company has previously promised to maintain guardrails and allow REMAX and Real to operate with their respective focuses and models, while pitching REMAX franchisees on utilizing the Real platform, including new AI tools.
Real CFO Ravi Jani also said that while the company officially underwrote $30 million in synergies, there was reason to expect that number could grow significantly, specifically citing how Compass has “done a great job” in finding those opportunities with Anywhere.
“Once we own the businesses, and we get the best athletes together and figure out how the go-forward business looks for the next decade, could that synergy number change? Yes, of course,” he said.
The proposition
Another big question from investors was how the new combined company will assess agents in the two very different models. Poleg acknowledged that REMAX agents are far more productive on average, closing 10 transactions per year in 2025 compared to Real’s six.
Getting REMAX agents onboard with Real’s ancillary services is something where the company sees “potential,” Poleg said, based on what would be an exponential increase in attachment of those offerings. And while Real has said it won’t make its platform mandatory, executives previously said they would have a dedicated team to pitch REMAX on its tech and services.
At the same time, Jani said he didn’t believe that integrating REMAX agents would require “a commensurate increase in” internal AI investments, claiming the technology “is really quite scalable.”
“I don’t think (the REMAX deal) is going to significantly change the level of intensity of investment,” he said.
How about addressing some of REMAX’s biggest struggles? While Poleg lauded the franchisor’s ability to be “incredibly resilient throughout what’s been a four-year downturn at this point,” the brokerage tried and failed to grow domestic agent count in the post-pandemic market.
“Just generally speaking, I think that coming in with (a) real growth mindset and just a stronger value proposition for the REMAX side, I think will help change the trajectory of the growth in agent count in the U.S. and Canada,” Poleg said.
He added that Real wants to put its proprietary AI program “to work” on REMAX’s websites to nurture leads, something he claimed could significantly drive up transactions based on high-intent buyers visiting those sites.
That reliance on Real’s tech being applied to REMAX personnel and infrastructure appears to be the foundation of optimism around the transaction—though obviously some of that will depend on how franchises choose to move forward, with Real executives previously saying they were also optimistic about REMAX renewal rates.
“We knew that someday technology would catch up to (our) vision,” Poleg said. “That day has arrived. And with the REMAX transaction, we will soon have the network and the reach to bring it to life at a scale that we believe can transform how people buy and sell homes.
“You cannot vibe code this,” he added. “You have to dream it, build it and earn it.”
