The top leaders in residential real estate were recently honored in the annual Swanepoel POWER 200 2015/16. Innovators from all the largest real estate companies in the United States and Canada are represented, including Realogy, Zillow, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Keller Williams Realty, RE/MAX, Coldwell Banker, Move, Inc., and the National Association of REALTORS®.
Holding the number one spot for the third consecutive year is Richard A. Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of Realogy Holdings. Realogy owns many of the county’s leading brands, including: Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Sotheby’s International Realty, ERA Franchise Systems, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, and ZipRealty. With approximately 13,600 franchised and company-owned offices, and over 250,000 brokers and agents worldwide, Realogy touches one out of every four home sales in America.
Moving up one spot to the second most powerful person in real estate is Ron Peltier, chairman and chief executive officer of HomeServices of America, a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway. HomeServices posted solid growth year over year while continuing to add new companies in 2015, the largest of which was $2.5 billion First Weber in Wisconsin, pushing their total agent count to over 70,000, generating over 550,000 transactions annually.
Zillow Group chief executive officer Spencer Rascoff, Gary Keller, co-founder and chairman of Keller Williams Realty International, and Dale Stinton, chief executive officer of the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) round out the Top 5. Stinton, up from number 6 last year, is credited for his guidance that enabled NAR to make a number of key strategic moves in 2015 that are expected to impact all 1.17 million REALTORS®.
Moving up in the largest number of positions and breaking into the top 20 are Chris Heller and John Davis, the chief executive officer and president of Keller Williams Realty who took office a year ago and now jointly head up the 131,000 agent international franchise as well as Geoff Lewis, the newly appointed president of RE/MAX, the world’s largest real estate group based on transaction count.
The Swanepoel Power 200 (SP200) annually ranks the top “Power Players” in the residential real estate industry and publishes nine lists covering Corporate Executives, Power Brokers, Technology Executives, Women Leaders, Association/MLS Executives, Outsider Powers, Trendsetters, Social Influencers, and the overall POWER 200. This year over 1,000 leaders were reviewed and researched, resulting in a total of 270 listed in the nine SP200 lists.
For more information, visit www.sp200.com.
