NextHome poised to ‘play in a much larger sandbox’ under eXp 

While consolidation in the real estate industry is nothing new, 2026 has been marked by multiple major M&A moves: The Compass-Anywhere merger closed in January, Real announced its planned acquisition of REMAX in April, and most recently, eXp World Holdings acquired NextHome in a deal revealed earlier this month.

For REMAX, the decision seemed inevitable — the company's revenue had been on a downward spiral — but NextHome was among the few large brokerages to see double-digit growth in sales volume and transactions last year. So why go the M&A route?  

"Candidly, with eXp's financial backing, we have the ability to play in a much larger sandbox than we could have as a private company," NextHome Co-founder and Co-CEO James Dwiggins said during a recent episode of NAR's "Change Agents" podcast.

eXp's unmatched 'buying power': NextHome began exploring opportunities to scale up in early 2025, and the franchisor was in talks with eXp by September, Dwiggins explained.

"They have buying power that no one else does," he said. "For us to be able to scale some of our modeling, we needed the ability to have that cost efficiency to be able to provide that in our franchise structure."

And what do agents get out of the deal? An agent's career evolves over time as their priorities shift, he noted: "A lot of times agents go, 'I want to be able to eventually sit back. I don't want to produce anymore. I want to run my own business.' There's technically both paths under either eXp or under NextHome."

As for eXp, "they recognize there's only so much market share a cloud brokerage can grab," Dwiggins added. "eXp will continue to grow — but there is a cap in that growth, and a majority of companies are still in franchising."

Leaders with shared values: Dwiggins said he and eXp Realty CEO Leo Pareja met while speaking at industry events and quickly realized they were "cut from the same cloth" with a shared tendency to be "outspoken about issues in the industry."

"Leo and I see the world the same," Dwiggins said, adding that both leadership teams had "a lot of synergy" — "and that's key to putting two companies under one umbrella."

Different from other M&As: Though the announcement came just a week after Real said it was buying REMAX, the eXp-NextHome deal was already wrapped up by then, Dwiggins said, and "is not the same as these other transactions" — in part because "this deal is done — this isn't announced and then it potentially can close."

NextHome's "entire leadership team from top to bottom moved with this whole thing," he added. The two brands are "culturally still going to be their own thing," he said, and "are being run separately."

Knowing when to say 'no': Since launching in 2014, NextHome has grown to nearly 6,000 agents working across almost 600 offices in 49 states. The secret to scaling up, according to Dwiggins? "You say no more often than you say yes. If you say yes to everybody, then it just becomes this thing that you can't control."

Aligned with eXp, NextHome's leadership aspires to make the company "bigger," he added, and "with more speed in a market where things are consolidating."

"I call it chapter two," Dwiggins said. "First 11 years was chapter one, building the foundation. Now we're going to build the house really, really well."