Cloud-Based Brokerages Are Still a Fraction of the Industry. The Next Wave of Growth May Come Through Acquisition.

Written by:

Steve Marcinuk

Date:

29 Jul 2026

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Of roughly 1.4 million real estate agents in the United States, only about 140,000 to 150,000 currently hang their licenses with cloud-based brokerages, roughly 10 percent of the agent population. Despite a decade of visibility, the model remains early in its adoption curve.

What’s accelerating now isn’t just organic agent recruitment. It’s consolidation. Independent broker-owners facing rising compliance costs and industry litigation are weighing whether to maintain their own operations or affiliate with a larger platform that already has infrastructure at scale. That dynamic is creating a new growth channel for cloud-based firms, one built less on individual agent persuasion and more on wholesale team and brokerage absorption.

Sam Rodriguez, Board Member at Epique Realty, sees this consolidation trend accelerating. “We’re going to start to see more of the smaller independent broker-owners just go ahead and hang up shop and affiliate with one of the larger companies because these larger companies can provide a lot more just because of the scale,” he says.

Why Agents Still Move

Agents dislike switching brokerages, according to Rodriguez, who helped grow eXp Realty from a few thousand agents to over 50,000 during a six-year tenure before joining Epique. But when they do move, the calculus has expanded beyond commission splits alone.

“Agents are not just looking for more commission split; they’re looking for what they can get that helps them in their business, helps them get more business, more leads, make more money, but also more time,” he says.

The cloud model’s structural advantage is straightforward: without brick-and-mortar overhead – no office leases, no receptionists, no copy machines – these firms can redirect revenue toward agent-facing benefits. Epique now offers over 100 included benefits, ranging from free leads and transaction coordination to listing photography, healthcare coverage, and child and elder care support.

Rodriguez addresses the question of financial sustainability directly: the company funds these benefits through a combination of monthly agent fees and per-transaction charges, and he describes Epique as both profitable and debt-free. “This is not a company that’s trying to build big just to look like we’re a big top-producing company just for the numbers’ sake,” he says. “We’re still running a business here, especially as we prepare to go public.”

Revenue Share vs. Profit Share

One structural distinction Rodriguez emphasizes is the difference between revenue share and profit share, two models that sound similar but operate differently. Keller Williams popularized profit sharing over several decades, but Rodriguez argues that model has a limitation: profitability at the office level is controlled by the office owner, not the agent building the network.

Revenue share pays from gross revenue before expenses are deducted. “Profit share is not in anybody’s control other than the owner of that office, whereas revenue share comes right off the top,” Rodriguez says.

He also draws a distinction between how different cloud brokerages structure their revenue share programs. Some build in qualification thresholds, production minimums, or activity requirements that make earning revenue share difficult. Epique’s version, which Rodriguez describes as deliberately simple, has no such gates. “If it’s simple to understand, then it’s going to be simple for them to share with others,” he says. “There’s no roadblocks put in place; the agents get paid their revenue share no matter what.”

The Retirement Problem

The deeper pitch for these models isn’t current income; it’s exit strategy. Most real estate agents, Rodriguez notes, never retire in any traditional sense. They work until they stop, and their business dies with them. Revenue share models attempt to create a passive income stream that persists after an agent stops selling, and in some structures, transfers to heirs.

“An agent who, in the event that one day they do pass away, their family can still enjoy and reap the rewards of what that person has been able to create inside the company,” Rodriguez says. “That’s the part that for many years just didn’t exist.”

Rodriguez himself hasn’t sold a property since 2021 but earns income on approximately 900 to 950 transactions per month through the network he’s built, a figure that reflects years of concentrated network-building effort.

Consolidation as the Next Growth Phase

Epique’s trajectory illustrates how quickly cloud-based firms can scale through a combination of organic recruitment and team absorption. The company had roughly 50 agents in Texas when Rodriguez joined. It now has over 4,000 agents across all 50 states and has expanded internationally into Toronto, with Australia and Mexico planned next. On the Real Trends Verified list, it ranked 24th in closed transactions in 2024 and 15th in 2025.

Rodriguez expects a top-10 ranking by year’s end. The next phase of growth, he says, will lean more heavily on absorbing existing teams and brokerages, groups like the 120-agent team based in Indiana that spans multiple states, or the 40-to-50-agent independent brokerage in the Coeur d’Alene and Spokane area that affiliated with Epique rather than continuing to build independently.

“They realize that it’s hard to build something to scale the way that Epique already has,” Rodriguez says. “Easier just to affiliate in that manner.”

The industry lawsuits of recent years have added urgency to this consolidation, according to Rodriguez. Independent broker-owners watching two of the largest brands merge into other companies are reconsidering whether operating independently is worth the legal and compliance exposure. For agents at those smaller firms, the question is whether their current brokerage can offer the infrastructure, benefits, and long-term wealth-building tools that larger cloud-based platforms now provide, or whether affiliating with one of those platforms is the more practical path forward.

About the Expert: Sam Rodriguez is a Board Member at Epique Realty, with prior experience helping grow eXp Realty from a few thousand agents to over 50,000 during a six-year tenure before joining Epique.

This article is based on information provided by the expert source cited above. It is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or real estate advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any real estate or financial decisions.