Is this the best brokerage brand ‘you’ve never heard of’? 

Matt Widdows doesn't court the spotlight — but the company he founded in 2000, HomeSmart, is increasingly hard to ignore.

With roughly 25,000 agents across brokerage and franchise operations, HomeSmart now ranks No. 12 on the T3 Sixty Mega 1000 ranking of top brokerages by sales volume and No. 10 among franchise brands. And its steady, under-the-radar growth and widespread adoption of proprietary tech position it as one of one of the strongest national real estate brands in the country.

"We're probably the greatest thing you've never heard of," Widdows told an audience of industry leaders at last month's T3 Sixty Leadership Summit. (Note: Real Estate News is an editorially independent division of T3 Sixty.)

A model built on transaction efficiency

From its early days at the turn of the century, HomeSmart was designed to operate differently. Widdows launched the company with a 100% commission model and a sharp focus on transaction-based efficiency — a structure that has remained core even as the company scaled.

But its killer app may be its centralized service model. Every transaction and customer support request flows through its Scottsdale, Arizona, headquarters, regardless of geography. While agents still receive local support in major markets, the core systems and staffing are centralized.

That decision has helped the company cut costs, maintain cultural consistency and improve responsiveness — especially important given HomeSmart's high-volume, low-fee structure.

"We don't want automated machines talking to our agents. We want to be there for them with a person that's friendly and there to help them," Widdows says. To make that work, the back-end must run lean and efficiently — a challenge HomeSmart has met with its homegrown tech stack.

Deeply embedded tech that agents actually want to use

HomeSmart's technology is not just an enhancement to its operations — it's core to its infrastructure. Every franchisee and agent uses the same proprietary system, which covers transaction management, CRM, document processing and compliance.

Unlike many brokerages that pull together third-party platforms via APIs, HomeSmart built everything to work together from the start, Widdows said. 

"The genius of what we have is that everything's integrated," says Widdows. "That makes it super easy."

Tech development began with Widdows himself, who created an early tool to help agents track transaction status in real time. That tool has evolved into a sophisticated system used by every office and agent in the network.

Proprietary tools, practical impact

Widdows says HomeSmart's goal isn't to build the flashiest tools, but the most effective ones.

"We may not have the best CRM or the best transaction management platform. But the real key is the integration and the way that they talk to each other," he says. The tools live within a single ecosystem and are constantly tweaked based on feedback from the folks who use them.

Some specific examples of what their tools offer:

• Heatmaps that analyze agent density and MLS data to identify optimal branch office locations.

• Doc recognition tools that extract transaction data for compliance and broker review.

• Automated auditing to ensure agents have submitted necessary documents and no revenue is missed.

The next advantage: AI

Widdows sees generative and predictive AI as the next layer of transformation, and HomeSmart is already using it to generate marketing content, automate compliance reviews and audit transaction data.

"The challenge is figuring out ways to implement all of those things… faster than everybody else," he says. "AI is moving at the speed of light right now."

As it figures out the path forward, HomeSmart is focusing on driving efficiency, reducing costs and delivering real value to agents.

"Some agents need a lot from us, some need very little. But they all need to know we're there when they call," Widdows said.