eXp’s CEO has ambitious goals — and he’s ‘not going anywhere’ 

FRISCO, Texas — At just 42 years old, eXp Realty CEO Leo Pareja had already built an impressive resume as a real estate agent and tech founder before taking the helm at the cloud-based brokerage last year. As for leading eXp's 82,000 agents through a time of major change in policy and tech? That's a role Pareja was made for.

At this year's T3 Leadership Summit, Pareja talked about his professional growth, the fast pace of change in tech and his grand ambition of taking the eXp brand to new heights. (Note: Real Estate News is an editorially independent division of T3 Sixty.)

Why eXp made its forms available to everyone

eXp's response to the National Association of Realtors' recent rule changes — and the new buyer agreement requirement — was formed by three guiding principles: to develop a document that was legal, ethical and enforceable, Pareja said. He saw the scenario of needing a buyer to sign a document before opening a door as creating "a ton of friction."

The single-page plainly worded eXp agreement was the result — and the company made it available to anyone in the industry to use.

"It was Rob Hahn who tweeted, asking if it was for everybody and I was like, 'OK,' and we just made the decision on Twitter," Pareja explained. "We want a cooperating, functioning, liquid market, because it's what's best for the American consumer, and so we took the stance that we're going to open source [our forms]."

Pareja said the decision made him the "punching bag of the industry" — at least at first. But other organizations quickly began borrowing the language and ethos of eXp's forms.

"The greatest compliment we've received is we've had entire states and associations adopt not our forms word for word, but our philosophy," he said. "And other companies called me and asked if we're cool with them using it, and I said, 'Absolutely. Make it your own; localize it.' That's what open source is."

An end to gatekeeping technology?

Pareja touched on the quick pace at which technology and AI are evolving, and how industry leaders and agents need to become early adopters as tech becomes more accessible.

eXp has taken that a step further, developing a relationship with OpenAI and participating in working groups and prototyping. "We get everything ahead of everybody else. We have one of the largest enterprise accounts that exists," Pareja explained. "We actually rank and publish usage back to our agents and to our staff. And what we're seeing is like, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy here — if you're not using this, you're not going to be part of the work going forward."

Pareja recalled that eXp Founder Glenn Sanford once challenged him to spend a weekend rebuilding Remine — the tech platform Pareja founded in 2015 — using AI tools. As a tech entrepreneur, Pareja conceded that when he was building and growing Remine a decade ago, he was dependent on developers and couldn't dig into the details of bugs and issues himself.

That's changing quickly now that advanced AI-driven tools are available to anyone. "The entire time I've been in business, there is this gatekeeping by technologists that's about to disappear," he predicted.

Why future brokerages will look like eXp

The fast pace of change in technology will also influence the evolution of the brokerage industry and business models. Franchising worked as a model for so long because it enabled brokerage leaders to build their brand outside of their region before high-speed internet and mobile technology, Pareja explained.

But now, they can hop on a Youtube livestream and immediately reach 50,000 people at the same time, he said, referencing the communication method eXp used in its response to NAR's March 2024 settlement. 

There are already a handful of quickly growing cloud-based brokerages with revenue share models closely resembling eXp's — notably The Real Brokerage and LPT Realty — and their growth is accelerating. This wave of new competitors means eXp and its leadership are "onto something," Pareja said, noting that people initially thought Sanford was "crazy" when he drove around the country in an RV to explain how the business model would work. 

So what is eXp's next goal? Becoming the largest brokerage by agent count in the world, Pareja said. A "nice round number" would be 200,000 agents, or maybe even 250,000, he added.

And Pareja has plenty of time to try and make that happen. "I'm 42 and I'm not going anywhere. I just got the keys to the battleship," he said. "I want to become the largest brand in the country."