LPT Realty launches luxury offshoot Aperture Global 

A new competitor in the luxury real estate space has emerged. On May 8, quickly growing cloud-based upstart LPT Realty launched a new luxury-focused offshoot called Aperture Global Real Estate, which leaders expect to compete with the top brokerages that dominate major upscale city markets. 

The new brokerage brand is operational in 15 U.S. states and four international locations, the company said. Another 20 international markets are set to launch in the near future and Aperture plans to announce new team affiliations in the coming weeks. 

If LPT Realty's emphasis was on agent choice — from different revenue models to flexibility in brokerage identity and marketing — Aperture will have a unified brokerage appearance, name and stature across markets, LPT Holdings founder and CEO Robert Palmer and Michael Valdes, LPT International CEO, told Real Estate News.

The launch also comes as LPT leaders continue to prepare the company for an IPO at some point later this year or early 2026. An LPT public investor launch would be the first residential real estate brokerage IPO since the Real Brokerage began trading in June 2021. At the start of the year, LPT had about 15,000 agents, Palmer told Real Estate News.

Targeting agents who 'want a strong brokerage brand'

"There's another group of agents who want brand standards. They want a strong brokerage brand. They want that brokerage brand to create some cohesiveness across different states, different global cities and different markets. And that's really where Aperture comes in," Palmer said.

While LPT Realty offers agent compensation plans that compete directly with other revenue share leaders — such as eXp, Real and Keller Williams — and a flat fee plan that competes with Fathom Realty and United Real Estate, Aperture will seek to compete directly with established luxury brands like Compass, Christie's and Sotheby's, Palmer explained. 

"It's a very interesting business to build," said Palmer. "If you look back and think: What if Compass and eXp were owned by the same holding company where Compass could solve its expense problem by having 90,000 cloud agents all riding the same rails with transaction processing and then on the flip side, Compass' model can help fix eXp's margin problem? When you imagine those two entities living under one holding company — that's been our vision from day one."

And to help set the effort up for success, Palmer and Valdes have announced Mercedes Saewitz, former principal broker and founding agent at Compass, as Aperture's SVP of operations.

Seeking 'the top 1%' of global consumers

International sales will also be a focus of Aperture, with the team aiming to attract upscale clients who buy and sell properties in different countries — or "the top 1% of consumers around the globe," Valdes explained. Aperture leaders say that it's the first independent global luxury brokerage launch. 

"I spent 15 years as global vice president of Sotheby's and opened up over 70 countries for them in my career with them and understanding that luxury space having come back from the standing the benefits of a cloud brokerage, it's never been you've never had the synergy of having both to really benefit that agent," Valdes told Real Estate News.

A big perk that the company will also offer is a loyalty program and "Unobtanium" events for its high-net-worth clients with properties in multiple locations. The experiences will be "things that money cannot necessarily buy," Valdes said. "Imagine a mini Davos, where you have the center of millionaires and billionaires all coming together for an event that would be curated and done by Aperture."