The recent press release for a 20-member team leaving one national brokerage to align with another was fairly boilerplate; the kind of update that is quickly reabsorbed into the churn of a news cycle.
But sometimes there is a story within the story.
Sandra Rathe, leader of The Sandra Rathe Team, took RISMedia behind the curtain, sharing how the process unfolded moving her high-performing group from Keller Williams to The Real Brokerage at a time when more and more ambitious real estate professionals are weighing their affiliation options.
The email announcement explained that the team, headquartered in Weston, Florida, and formerly with Keller Williams, would be taking its 20 agents and $135 million in annual sales volume to The Real Brokerage, expanding Real’s footprint across South Florida’s competitive and high-intensity Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach markets.
Founded in 2009, the Rathe team claims to have built a reputation for delivering an elevated client experience rooted in market expertise, seamless execution and personalized service. Serving clients at all price points, the team has seen significant momentum in the luxury segment. In 2025 alone, 45 of the 220 homes the team closed were considered luxury properties, reflecting its continued growth in the high-end market.
As part of her move to Real, Rathe will join Real Luxury, which does its own marketing and currently has 250 luxury agents, representing all 50 states and Canada. In addition to leading her team, she hosts a monthly global luxury workshop, Mastering Luxury with Sandra, where she shares insights and strategies with agents looking to elevate their luxury business.
Rathe provided RISMedia with a deep dive into the move to Real, as well as her strategies and philosophy on everything from capturing the luxury market to integrating new agents successfully.
Michael Catarevas: How long were you with Keller Williams?
Sandra Rathe: 10 years.
MC: Why did you decide to make a move?
SR: For a couple reasons. A big one was the technology at Real is more advanced and more robust for the agents and for compliance. The support agents will get is really top notch and is going to free up time on tasks and chasing down answers. That will help them move faster and allow me as team leader to ensure that the client is getting the best experience possible.
MC: Did Real approach you, or did you approach them?
SR: They approached me, and it made sense. Companies were always coming to us asking us to make a move. Some of them even offered money upfront. There’s a lot of courting that goes on when you’re running a decent-sized team. And I always listen because, even if I’m not interested, I like to learn about how other companies are operating. That helps me operate better. So I’m always willing to have the conversation, and this time the conversation really, really hit home. It made sense from a technology standpoint and also from a financial standpoint for the team. Real gives them more ways to make money and more ways to keep money in their pockets. So financially it made huge sense.
MC: When a team of a decent size like yours moves, how much work goes into the process from the beginning to the end to make something like that happen?
SR: I didn’t put a whole lot of upfront effort into it, to be honest with you, but once we made the decision, it was ripping off the Band-Aid and stomping on the gas because you’ve got so much to adjust to. All of your marketing, all your listings that are signed, everything from your email signature to your voicemail. All those things seem small, but when you’ve got a team of 20 agents and multiple marketing lines and multiple marketing places, signs and all of that, it’s a big undertaking, which is part of the reason that we stayed in the same place for 10 years. You’ve got to be really committed to what you’re moving to in order to do that. The cost and the time involved is expensive.
MC: So when you start the undertaking, who else knows what you’re trying to do?
SR: The biggest challenge is making the decision, right? Because it’s not a decision you’re going to make in a vacuum, and it’s not a decision you can make overnight because there are so many factors. You have to say, well, if I make this move, I’ve got to find office space. I’ve got to get all my signs redone. You have to make sure you’ve got some buy-in from at least a handful of the influential agents on the team. You have to know who you can trust to have the conversation with before the decision is officially made.
MC: Did Keller Williams have any idea that you were thinking of maybe making a move?
SR: How do I want to say this…I think that if they were paying attention to the needs of agents, they could have seen it coming.
MC: And once you announced or explained what you were considering or going to do, did they counter?
SR: There was a lot of discussion about ways they could try to get us to stay. As a leader, my job is to weigh those options, and at the end of the day, the pros of going to Real outweighed the things they were offering to stay.
MC: You are going from one revenue-share company to another. How important is the revenue/profit share aspect to your team?
SR: At Keller Williams, there was basically no profit-share opportunity. The move to Real opens another facet of income for the agents. So while it is not the only factor, it for sure adds another nice bonus to the agents that they have the ability to earn something when they previously did not.
MC: Moving on, how are you so successful in the competitive South Florida luxury market?
SR: I would say two things. One is our expertise. We are constantly learning and growing and raising our games. We’re not just sitting and waiting for things to come to us. We’re out looking, seeking. We go to conferences, we attend webinars and podcasts and anything I can get a hold of that I can bring to my team, I think that makes a huge difference for the quality we provide our clients because we have such a great grasp of the market and of the processes and all the things that go into real estate.
And then second, I would say our relationships. We’re very, very relational with our clients. So it’s never a transaction, it’s somebody’s future. When we approach it from the standpoint that these are people and these are their biggest assets and their biggest emotional baskets, if you will, we can provide clients with a much better level of service than if we approach it as just a transaction.
Sometimes putting the client first ends up costing us the deal because maybe they decide not to move, and that’s okay. We’re here for the long haul, not the quick sale. We’re here for the long-term relationship, and that really makes a big difference for people when they know you care.
MC: You’re the leader of the team. When there are many agents, how much time does it take for you to be involved with each one of them?
SR: We’ve developed some really good systems for our agents. For example, we have texting groups for new agents, so when they come in, they have support not just from me but also from fellow new agents. Then we’ve got another texting group with more experienced agents so they can learn and grow at an exponential rate because they’ll ask their questions in the group and everybody will learn from the response.
We do a lot of group things like role-playing and trainings in general so that they’re learning at a more rapid pace and have each other to lean on as well. We do a monthly team meeting with everybody learning from each other’s questions and answers. So it’s finding ways to multiply myself by teaching and training them in the best groups possible.
MC: Are you still representing clients on your own?
SR: I do not represent on my own. I support all the agents, and I’m aware of every transaction that’s going on. So basically when people hire us, they’re getting two for the price of one. If I have to go to a property or talk to a client, I will. But in general, the agents are trained at such a high level that the client never feels the need to talk to me, but if they want to, I am available.
MC: How closely do you monitor the sales numbers for each agent? I mean, obviously you keep close tabs, but on what basis do they get reviewed as to how they’re doing?
SR: Your timing is perfect because we actually just went over that today in our team meeting. Basically we have standards that they need to meet within three months of being with us. And then for months three through six, they have to hit certain criteria, and then after six months they have to hit a different set of criteria. So there is an incubation period where they’re growing and learning our processes and procedures. We expect a little bit less to start, but over time it grows because they didn’t join us for a social club. While we are social and do love to spend time together, they joined us to make money. They joined us to raise their real estate game to a higher level.
MC: Generally, do your team members come from other agencies or are they new to real estate?
SR: We have a good mixture of both. We probably care a little bit more on the side of newer agents because we can train them from the ground up and don’t have to undo bad habits. More than half would be considered brand new.
MC: How quickly can you get a sense of someone new in regard to how well they will or won’t do?
SR: I would say within the first two months, if they’re paying attention and I’m paying attention, we can get a good feel. We just celebrated one of our agents who’s been with us a little over a year. He did rentals the whole first year, but I could see the way he was operating, the way he was performing, the way he made his calls, the way he was coachable, I could see he was going to do great things. Three months ago he shifted from rentals to sales, and he’s crushing it. He was one of our top agents for the month of February, and we saw it growing. So we can see that within the first few months for sure.
MC: When you talk about luxury markets, a lot of them don’t get much higher than South Florida’s. What’s it like to handle these multi-million-dollar properties?
SR: When you’re working in that upper price point, you have to be on top of your game. People are expecting you to fully understand the market and what they’re going through. So a lot of the luxury market is making it an easy process, an easy experience for the seller or the buyer, anticipating their needs and being proactive, not reactive.
And it involves a lot of analysis. You’ve got to really understand your numbers. What is the price point? What are the adjustments to find the right price? It’s an art and a science combined into one.
MC: Is there more of a security aspect with not just the luxury part of it, but the fact that you likely represent some clients who are well known and are very concerned about staying private?
SR: For sure. There’s definitely people that don’t want anybody to know their business or what they paid for the house. They want the pictures taken down as soon as the house is sold. We have to be able to read the client and accommodate them the best we can. We never disclose who our clients are, unless the client wants us to.
MC: You mean for publicity?
SR: Yes. Sometimes they do. They want you to put it out there, but for the most part, we’re their fiduciary, we’re there to protect them and be discreet.
MC: Say a very famous and/or wealthy person wants to buy a luxury property, but doesn’t want to go through the whole lengthy process. Do they have representatives first work with you before they get personally involved?
SR: It is a thing. Sometimes it’s a manager, or it could be an accountant sometimes. Different people have different ways they manage their money and manage who’s involved with decisions about big purchases.
MC: Does it sometimes happen where even you don’t know who the exact client might be until the end?
SR: Yep, absolutely.
MC: Do you represent condos as well as standalone properties?
SR: We do, yes.
MC: I’ve read that condos are not selling well down there, even the ones right on the ocean. Is that just a trend?
SR: The condo market for the last two or three years has been very challenged. After the Surfside (Champlain Towers South) building that collapsed in 2021, the whole industry changed because of the 40-year certifications that a lot of buildings didn’t have. Surfside didn’t have theirs. The government came in and said condo buildings have got to have them. All of a sudden a lot of buildings needed to do repairs, they needed to do big assessments and people couldn’t get insurance on the buildings.
So there’s just been a huge influx of properties on the market because (unit owners) wanted to get away from the assessments that were coming. Some people don’t want to live through the repairs. A lot of times they have to redo the balconies, things like that. So you’ve got a lot more on the market, and then you’ve got the buyers who are afraid to buy condos after that happened, afraid of assessments and increased insurance. If you can’t get insurance, you can’t get a mortgage. So there’s a lot of factors that all kind of came together at once.
