For agents at a franchise asking the same questions we asked
Why Did Houston Properties Team Leave Keller Williams for Real?
Updated
Written by Bob Martin, Houston Properties Team, September 2026. Reviewed by Paige Martin.
Bottom line: We spent seventeen good years at Keller Williams. We left in 2026 because we wanted a platform where the economics of the brokerage, the team and the agent all point the same direction. This is the story and the part we kept.
What are we grateful for?
Seventeen years is a long time to be anywhere. Paige and I built the Houston Properties Team inside Keller Williams, and some of the closest friends we have came out of the senior mastermind groups there. We traveled with those people. We compared numbers with them twice a year. They helped us build the business and the life we have now, and none of that goes away because we changed the sign on the door.
Everything on our About page, the $2 billion closed, the 3,000+ families, the RealTrends 2026 rank, was built while we were there. We are not here to run down the place that helped us do it.
Which three questions changed our minds?
For about five years, every time the biggest teams got together, we ran the same test. We looked around the room for one leader who had all three:
A good business. Real economics, above what most of the room was making.
A good life at home. A spouse or partner who was glad they were in real estate.
The ability to leave the business for a while and have it still be there when they got back.
We could always find two. We never found three. The bigger businesses were often not profitable. The profitable ones had an owner who could not leave. Every six months we ran the test again, and every six months the answer was the same.
That is when we stopped believing the next level up would fix it. The problem was not the people. Those were some of the strongest operators in the country. It was that the model rewarded size and production, and nothing in it rewarded a business the owner could step away from.
What changed around us?
Two things happened in the same stretch.
In March 2025, Keller Williams announced a strategic partnership with Stone Point Capital, a private equity firm (Keller Williams press release, March 2025). A change in ownership is a normal thing for a company to do. It also changes what a company answers to, and we watched to see what that would mean for a team like ours.
Closer to home, our own office's interests and our team's interests stopped pointing the same direction. That happens in any franchise model where the office earns from the agents' production and also competes for the same clients and recruits. We raised it. We could not find a path forward with the people in the room. So we started looking.
What did we look at?
Every brokerage we could get a meeting with. Starting our own. Buying an office. We put the same list of questions to all of them:
What does it cost the team to run the business here, all in?
What does it cost each of our agents, all in?
Does the brokerage make more money when our agents make more money, or when they pay more fees?
Can an agent build anything here besides a commission check?
Could we leave for a month and have it run?
Why Real?
Real answered the list better than anyone else, and the answer came down to one word: alignment.
Cost. A cap, not a percentage forever. Real's caps are $12,000, $6,000 and $4,000 depending on the plan, with a $900 annual fee and a $50 per-transaction fee, and after the cap Real's share is 0 percent (Real Brokerage, September 2026). No monthly office fee. The team runs lean and so does every agent on it.
Ownership. Agents can earn stock awards tied to production (Real Brokerage, September 2026). A commission check is income. Stock is something you keep.
Revenue share instead of profit share. This was the one we did not expect to matter most. Profit share pays out of what is left after an office's costs, so it depends on how the office is run. Revenue share pays a percentage of company revenue on each closing by the agents you sponsor, in five tiers of 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 percent (Real Brokerage revenue share program, September 2026). It is paid by Real, not by the agent, and it does not depend on any office's expenses.
What that did for us was bigger than the money. It put us on the same side of the table as every agent we sponsor, on our team and off it. When they do well, we do well. We thought we had a strong community before. We did not know what alignment felt like until the economics agreed with the relationships.
Leaving. Paige and I now travel about a month at a time, three or four times a year, with the team running (Bob Martin, September 2026). That was the third question. It took a different platform and a lot of systems, and we got there.
What did we keep?
Our name. Our clients. Our standards. The friends. The models and habits we learned in seventeen years of masterminds, which still run the team every day. The gratitude.
What would we tell an agent at Keller Williams?
If you are happy, stay. A good office with a leader who looks out for you is worth more than any fee schedule, and there are many of them.
If you are asking, ask the five questions below before you move anywhere.
Then talk to the people who have made the move, and to the people who decided not to. Both lists are worth your time.
Step by step
What should you ask before you move anywhere?
- 01
The three questions
Find the three people ahead of you in your model and check the three questions. Do any of them have all three?
- 02
Whose side the economics are on
Ask who your office's economics are aligned with, in writing. Who makes money when you do, and who makes money when you pay?
- 03
The whole cost of a year
Add up the whole cost of a year, fees included, at your current production, and compare it to the same year under a cap.
- 04
What you could own
Ask what you could own here besides your next commission.
- 05
The last two weeks off
Ask when you last took two weeks off, and what broke.
Questions & answers
What else do Houston agents ask?
Did Houston Properties Team leave Keller Williams on bad terms?
No. Seventeen years there, and most of what is on this site was built during them. Some of the closest friends Bob and Paige have came out of the mastermind groups. The team kept its name, its clients, its standards and the habits it learned, and the page says so in his words.
The reason for leaving was structural rather than personal. The team wanted a platform where the brokerage, the team and the agent all make money the same way, and the model it was in rewarded size and production instead. Two things happened in the same stretch: Keller Williams announced a partnership with a private equity firm in March 2025, and the office's interests and the team's stopped pointing the same direction. Nothing on this site says anything about Keller Williams that is not on a public record with a month, which was Bob's own rule for the page.
What is the difference between profit share and revenue share?
Profit share pays out of what is left after an office's costs, so what you receive depends on how that office is run. Revenue share pays a percentage of company revenue on each closing by the agents you sponsor, in five tiers of 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 percent. Real pays it.
The practical difference is what your payout depends on. A profit-share payment moves with an office's expenses, which are somebody else's decisions and not visible to you. A revenue-share payment moves with what the agents you sponsored actually closed, and Real Brokerage funds it out of its own side of the split rather than out of the sponsored agent's, which is why naming a sponsor costs that agent nothing. The tiers, the thresholds that open the deeper ones and the rules around them are the brokerage's, and they are set out on the revenue share page.
Should I leave Keller Williams for Real?
If you are happy, stay. A good office with a leader who looks out for you is worth more than any fee schedule. If you are asking anyway, run the three questions on the people ahead of you in your model, price a year at your own production under a cap, and talk to people on both sides.
The three questions are whether anyone ahead of you has a good business, a good life at home, and the ability to leave the business for a while and find it still there when they get back. Houston Properties Team ran that test every six months for about five years and never found all three in one person. If you find them, you have your answer and it is to stay. If you do not, the next thing to price is a year at your own production under a cap, fees included, against what the same year costs you now.
Brokerage agreements, franchise obligations and equity programs carry legal and tax consequences. Talk to a Texas real estate attorney and your CPA before you sign anything. This page is experience, not advice.