Top 1,000 Brokerages Reveal Which Real Estate Firms Are Surviving — And Growing — In The Current Recessionary Market

Data from the nation's top 1,000 residential brokerages shows that while the broader real estate market continues to struggle, a small group of large, tech-enabled firms are using the downturn to expand their market dominance through aggressive consolidation and scale.

The Market in Recession

The housing sector has been one of the hardest-hit parts of the U.S. economy in recent years. Pending home sales fell 5.8% year over year in the four weeks ending February 15, 2026, the largest single-year decline in a year, according to IMPLAN's March 2026 economic analysis.

Homes are now taking an average of 67 days to go under contract, the slowest pace since early 2019. That slowdown translates to roughly 56,000 fewer home sales per year, a contraction tied to an estimated $22.4 billion loss in U.S. economic output and approximately 27,700 jobs across the broader economy.​

Keller Williams Co-Founder Gary Keller addressed the conditions directly at his firm's Mega Agent Camp in August 2025. "These are tough times. Make no mistake about it, according to Inman.

The United States, in particular, is not in a recession. Real estate is, and real estate has been," Keller said, according to Inman. He predicted the industry would not know whether it was emerging from the downturn until the third quarter of 2026.​

Big Brokerages Absorb the Market

Despite the difficult environment, data from RISMedia's 37th Annual Power Broker Report, which ranks the top 1,000 U.S. brokerages based on 2024 sales volume, found that those firms collectively reported over $100 billion in increased sales volume year over year.

That growth came even as the same group recorded more than 23,000 fewer collective transactions, reflecting higher home prices rather than higher activity.​

The concentration of market power at the top is stark. According to T3 Sixty's 2025 Trends Report, the 1,000 largest U.S. brokerages accounted for 60.5% of all national sales volume in 2023, while more than 100,000 smaller brokerages split the remaining 39.5%. The top 10 firms alone controlled over 25.7% of industry volume.​

The Firms Growing Fastest

Compass sits at the top of the rankings. The New York-based brokerage completed its $1.6 billion all-stock acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate on Jan. 9, 2026, creating what is now the world's largest residential real estate brokerage with a combined workforce of 340,000 professionals across every major U.S. city and 120 countries.

In the third quarter of 2025 alone, Compass reported revenue growth of 23.6% year over year to $1.85 billion, with transactions up 21.5% compared to just 2% growth across the overall market. The company expects to complete 1.2 million home sales annually following the merger, Realtor reported.​

eXp Realty, ranked third on the RISMedia Power Broker list with $159 billion in 2024 residential sales volume, has sustained growth through a virtual brokerage model that eliminates physical office costs and a revenue-sharing system that agents use to recruit peers.

The Real Brokerage, ranked fifth with over $42 billion in volume, followed a similar path and has become one of the industry's fastest-growing firms since its founding in 2014.​

What Separates the Survivors

T3 Sixty President and CEO Jack Miller, whose firm publishes the annual Swanepoel Power 200, noted that "power and influence is now also secured through strategic clarity, operational execution and the ability to build platforms, the flow of capital and listings access."

His firm's 2026 Trends Report identified brokerage consolidation, cloud-based national platforms, and the rise of agentic AI as the defining factors separating firms that are growing from those that are contracting.​

For smaller brokerages, the path is harder. The number of existing home sales sides per Realtor dropped from 8.1 in 2017 to 5.3 in 2023, a 34.6% decline, while commission rates have trended downward from their 2009 highs.

RISMedia CEO John Featherston acknowledged the pressure in releasing the Power Broker Report, noting that "brokers remain uncertain about what lies ahead" despite an overall lean toward optimism for the rest of 2026, as per NAR Realtor News.