The company Sanford founded in 2009 has achieved dominance and become a major industry force. EXp World Holdings’ brokerage, eXp Realty, which accounts for nearly all of the public company’s $3.5 billion revenue in 2024 through the first three quarters. The cloud-based company moved up one spot to become the U.S.’s third largest brokerage by annual sales volume with over 74,000 agents who do nearly $143.5 billion in annual sales.

Sanford strengthened his leadership bench in April 2024 by appointing then-chief strategy officer Leo Pareja as CEO of eXp Realty. That move coincided with several C-suite additions, including new leads for human resources, innovation, marketing and technology.

Other notable items Sanford helped eXp achieve in 2024 include:

• Operated as the industry’s most profitable public brokerage through the first three quarters, buoyed by a $12.4 million second quarter net profit.
• Led a rebranding effort and launched a new national website at exprealty.com to update eXp to a simpler, more broadly appealing consumer brand.
• Acquired marketing technology platform LUXVT in October to help agents in its two-year-old eXp luxury division promote its listings.

Reflecting a challenging market and the strategic decision to offboard unproductive agents, eXp’s agent count dropped for the fourth consecutive quarter, yet the firm’s third quarter 2024 transaction volume increased by 5% year-over-year to $50.8 billion. These results demonstrate a powerful shift in perspective at a company formerly focused on growing agent count, but now intentionally attending to agent productivity.

Sanford’s step back from day-to-day operations of eXp Realty demonstrates confidence in his revamped leadership team. He spent the latter part of 2024 focused on international growth, which netted new market openings. The coming year will see how his innovative model, now 15 years old, matures to attract productive agents amid swelling competition.