The economic headwinds facing real estate brokerages keep piling up, and it’s taking a toll on RE/MAX.
On its first-quarter 2025 earnings call Friday morning, the company disclosed year-over-year declines in revenue, agent count and operating cash flow, leading to an adjusted net income loss of $3.2 million.
CEO Erik Carlson acknowledged the issues facing brokerages, including tariffs, high mortgage rates, a possible recession and the evolving environment around things like the Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP). But he remains optimistic that RE/MAX can weather the storm.
“Overall, real estate has some pressure on us,” Carlson said. “We’re better positioned than others because of the professionalism, the productivity of our agents and the trust factor that they bring.
“It’s hard times with consumer demand a bit low, but our network is poised to be more successful than not. Do I think that we can stabilize agent count and get back to growth? Absolutely I do.”
The good news for RE/MAX is that its operating activities continue to generate positive cash flow. In the first quarter, that number sat at $5.7 million, but it’s a mammoth 40% decline relative to the same period last year.
Agent count in the U.S. continues to sink as well, dropping 7.5% year over year to 49,854. The brokerage’s U.S. agent count is down 20% since 2021, and it has experienced 15 straight quarters of annualized declines..
Overall agent count, however, has increased 2% compared to a year ago due to international agent growth of 10.5%. That’s up 2.3% year over year, although the figure dropped marginally compared to Q4 2024.
The real estate industry is embroiled in a debate over the National Association of Realtors‘ (NAR) controversial CCP, which requires Realtors to place a listing on a NAR-affiliated MLS within 24 hours of marketing a home publicly.
Compass has largely instigated the debate, as CCP stands as an obstacle to its mission to build an inventory of exclusive listings.
On its Q3 2024 earnings call, RE/MAX said it supported CCP. Since then, NAR has tweaked the rule to allow for some private listings, and Zillow has announced a similar rule to CCP under which a listing cannot appear on its platform without being placed on the MLS within 24 hours of outside marketing.
Carlson reiterated RE/MAX’s previous stance on CCP during Friday’s call.
“Ultimately, promoting listings to a broader audience remains in the best interest for most buyers and sellers, a position that RE/MAX has consistently held and still supports,” he said. “We are proactively helping our network navigate [the new rules], and we remain focused on those things within our control.”
The firm’s revenue declined to $29.4 million in Q1 2025, down from $31.1 million in Q1 2024. Its adjusted net loss was $3.2 million, although that’s an improvement from the same period last year, when the loss totaled $5.6 million.
RE/MAX also disclosed that chief financial officer Ward Morrison will leave next month, and the company is conducting a search for a replacement that includes internal and external candidates.
“Ward is just irreplaceable, I’ll say that,” Carlson said. “With the mortgage market, there’s a lot of great candidates out there, and so we’ll look both within the walls and outside the walls, and we’ll have an announcement on that.”
