Above: Parker Pemberton
Parker Pemberton, founder and CEO of Pemberton Real Estate, has announced a strategic merger with AJ Pettersen and the Advisory Realty Group, one of Minnesota’s highest-producing and most respected real estate teams.
The merger, which significantly expands Pemberton Real Estate’s scale and market presence—positioning the firm as one of the largest and fastest-growing independent residential brokerages in the region—follows Pemberton Real Estate’s October 2025 decision to go fully independent, breaking away from eXp Realty after several years of rapid growth.
“AJ is one of the most respected leaders in our marketplace and someone I align with deeply in values, ethics and leadership philosophy,” says Pemberton, who has profound respect for the relationship they’ve built throughout the years.
“One of my great friends in the real estate world, AJ and I put our heads together and said, ‘I think we can go farther together, and we can bring our model and our independent brand into this new marketplace in the city where we don’t have an office space and we don’t have a lot of agents.’”
In 2025, Pettersen and the Advisory Realty Group closed nearly 600 transactions totaling more than $230 million in sales volume, ranking among the top five teams in Minnesota and top 75 teams nationally across all brokerages.
Expanding into the Hopkins/St. Louis Park market, the move will strengthen the company while placing it in a new realm of sales production as a billion-dollar-plus company—with a growing roster of more than 275 agents across Minnesota and Western Wisconsin.
Passionate about providing more value to agents so they can grow their businesses year-over-year, Pemberton notes that the move is a deliberate strategic choice to remain founder-led and locally controlled at a time when much of the national brokerage landscape has trended toward consolidation.
“We’ve got major stuff happening on both the local and national level, and I truly believe that what we need right now is strong independent brands. If you don’t want to be part of something like the Anywhere/Compass merge, there needs to be a strong option locally for you to participate in, and we’re trying to be that option,” says Pemberton, whose brokerage was one of the first to come onto the scene having grown out of a real estate team within the past 10 years.
Jumping into real estate in 2016, Pemberton has been through all the stages—becoming a successful agent from ground zero, continuing to grow as a leveraged agent, and building a small team before learning the team game at the highest level.
“We started as a team, growing even more successful, and we kept a healthy profit margin along the way so we could continue to reinvest into the agents and into building value, eventually becoming the No. 1 team in the country at eXp in 2024,” says Pemberton.
“2025 was a ‘prove yourself’ year, and we did it again in both units and volume, and that was my sign that we were internally running our own ship and it was time to go independent,” adds Pemberton, who goes on to explain that his firm is a high-service model for the agent that’s unlike any other model in its market. “It’s an attractive offer to a lot of people who want to continue to grow their business.”
“Parker and I share a strong belief that agents thrive when leadership is accessible, decisions are made locally and the focus stays on building sustainable businesses,” adds Pettersen. “This merger allows us to accelerate that vision and add even more value for our agents and consumers.”
Founded in Edina, Minnesota, Pemberton Real Estate is a top-producing brokerage in the Midwest region, serving more than 3,000 clients across Minnesota and Western Wisconsin markets annually.
Sitting in the middle of the rankings, if you look at all 50 major markets with a sales price right around $400,000, Pemberton notes that while the Twin Cities market experiences the same highs and lows as other markets throughout the country, they aren’t nearly as dramatic.
“It’s a neutral market right now, where buyers still have the advantage, but sellers can still sell at the right price,” says Pemberton. “We remain a little bit more steady, but we also have Minnesota winters, so for us, winters are slow, and summers are high. But it’s just a matter of keeping your activities up as a real estate agent to continue to do the things you need to do.”
Having successfully scaled the team model into a broker model, Pemberton is excited for what the future holds.
While hammering home the fact that real estate professionals must pick up their work ethic, according to Pemberton, the ones who will have the greatest success this year are the ones who keep their heads down and focus on what matters most.
“I think the market is going to get better, and while the last three years have been horrendously tough for agents, I’m excited that there’s going to be a little reprieve there for them,” he says.
“On the broker side, I’m excited for where this company is going. We’ve had 100% year-over-year growth consecutively—2024, 2025—and now that we’re combining us and Advisory, it’s only going to make us stronger,” adds Pemberton.
“I’m looking forward to more opportunities like this where we can continue to partner with other great companies and go farther together.”
