As HomeSmart Founder and CEO, Matt Widdows acknowledges that it often falls to him to put out fires and rely on his knowhow and experience to aid those in need. That’s perfectly fine by him, because way back when, that’s exactly what he thought he’d be doing—just in a different way.
“At the end of high school I was training to be a fireman,” explains Widdows, who used to ride with the fire department a lot. “I got my EMT certification and was taking college classes, so that was the path I initially was interested in.”
Widdows, 55, is a tech-driven entrepreneur on a mission to modernize real estate by empowering agents with smarter systems and better economics. He founded HomeSmart in 2000 to disrupt the traditional brokerage model, offering 100% commission backed by proprietary technology and unmatched support.
Happy to look back on his life and life’s work, these are indeed heady times for Widdows and HomeSmart, one of the nation’s largest 100%-commission brokerages, with over 25,000 agents across the country. A former agent and serial entrepreneur, he continues to lead the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company as CEO, focused on innovation, scalability and unlocking the transformative power of real estate for everyone.
“We’re always pushing on growth,” says Widdows. “There’s so much consolidation in the industry right now
that I truly believe it’s either continue to grow or die. Scale is key moving forward, and you’re seeing that kind of play out.”
Widdows recognizes that while he captains the ship, he needs to rely on others to stay on the cutting edge. “There’s a point where you have to back off and allow your team to really kind of take it,” he says. “And that’s where we’re at today. I’ve got a great team that allows me to enjoy life a little more than I used to.”
Son Colby has joined him at HomeSmart, utilizing his own tech skillset, while daughter Jenny is a recent college grad. “I think she’s going to go try and do her own thing for a little bit and see how that works, which I encourage my kids to do. When you get older, you realize you don’t have all the answers anymore because you’re not as up on everything as you once were. It’s just a natural progression,” says Widdows.
“My son can do circles around me on technology these days, which 20 years ago was not the case,” he adds. “But you can only push hard for so long. Then you’ve got to back off and let other people start to push for you. That’s where it’s at, and it’s kind of nice to be at this point. Once I was the young guy in the room. I knew that was my edge, and I took advantage of it. Now I’m the old guy in the room. It’s a whole different game.”
Widdows is a bit modest about his tech prowess. At age 22, he started a medical computer company where he created accounts receivable systems for doctors and hospitals.
“That’s when I got into the whole technology thing,” he says. “I had worked for a software company prior to that when I was in college, so that got me the tech background. Then I saw a huge need for it in the real estate space. Nobody was really using tech to the level of what it could be used at when I first got in the game. That was a cornerstone of my offering in the early days, and still is today.”
The real estate business itself has certainly changed, especially over the last few years, what with lawsuits, consolidations and such. Normally an easygoing sort, Widdows doesn’t hold back when discussing these hot-button topics.
“The back-and-forth between Zillow and Compass and those guys? I try not to pay a whole lot of attention to it,” he says. “It’s the same noise that’s been happening since I got into this business; it’s just a different frequency. If you let that stuff bog you down, you start losing forward momentum. I obviously pay heed to things that are going to affect us business-wise.”
Widdows likes to literally rise above it all when he wants to find peace and clarity in his life.
“I’ve been flying planes for 35 years, and it’s always been a big passion of mine. I’ve flown jets on relief flights for hurricanes a few years ago, and now I’m flying helicopters just for something different. You learn the avionics and then it’s just numbers, more or less. My favorite part of it is taking off and landing. I get bored just sitting up there on autopilot.”
When it’s back to business, Widdows has his feet firmly on the ground. Affable and with a quick smile, he nonetheless acknowledges that what he has built took incredible stamina and staying power.
“I’ve been doing this for 30-plus years,” he says. “I don’t think a lot of people realize how much work and time it takes to have a successful business. When somebody asks me what the key is, I tell them it’s working your ass off while working smarter and harder than the next guy. Back in the day, I knew that the next guy probably wasn’t working as efficiently or as many hours. I was young and driven, and that was something different because most of the other real estate business owners were significantly older than me.”
Recalibrating his thinking to keep HomeSmart on the cutting edge is something Widdows does non-stop. “It’s looking at what others are doing, looking at what’s out there and available, changing your offering, adjusting it,” he says. “That’s a constant battle.”
Bullish on the industry even in these challenging times, Widdows mostly feels as though everything comes down to dollars and common sense.
“It’s all rate-driven at this point,” he says. “If rates can get back down in the fives, then I think we’ll see a big recovery, and probably a frenzy. While there’s a lot of pent-up demand out there, it’s going to take time for people to adjust to rates being where they are. I don’t know how much time, but when people are sitting on a 2% or 3% interest rate, it’s really tough to get away from that.
“But as far as the industry as a whole, I don’t think anybody’s going to replace real estate agents. I don’t think AI or automation or any of those things are going to replace agents. Possibly the amount of work that an agent has to do in a transaction is going to go down because there are going to be more tools for buyers and sellers and more things that they can do themselves. But you still have to have that intermediary when you’ve got a buyer and a seller pitted against each other in a transaction. They both have their own interests, and those interests are opposite. A real estate agent plays a big part on the psychology side of it.”
Still basically consumed with real estate 24/7, does Widdows ever think about what might have been whenever he sees a shiny red fire truck?
“I still love it to this day,” he says. “My dream would be to retire in a small town and volunteer with the local fire department. That would be awesome.”
Told that’s likely a long way off, he laughed and quickly replied, “I don’t know about that!”
For more information, visit https://www.homesmart.com.
