USA: eXp parent AGNT names Leo Pareja chief executive at eXpcon

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Glenn Sanford, who founded eXp in 2009, stepped down as chief executive of its parent company AGNT, Inc. on Thursday 8 October 2026. Leo Pareja, the chief executive of eXp Realty, succeeds him, the trade publications Inman and HousingWire both reported that day from eXpcon, the company's convention in Salt Lake City.

The handover was not the only news from the stage. On the same day the brokerage announced a mortgage joint venture with the lender Newrez, a programme that advances sellers money for pre-listing work and is repaid at closing, and a marketplace where its agents pay one another to cover showings. Taken together, the announcements describe where a group of more than 87,000 agents and brokers intends to go under its new chief: more services around the transaction, built on the size of its own network.

AGNT, Inc. second-quarter 2026 results, as reported by Inman on 8 October 2026.

A founder moves to the chair

Sanford does not leave the company. According to Inman, he remains chairman of the board and continues in an advisory role. Speaking to HousingWire, he described his position as that of someone who stays involved by choice and not out of necessity.

Pareja presented the change as one of continuity. He told HousingWire that the company would go on serving productive agents and that little would change beyond his own email address. That is a deliberately modest way to describe taking over a listed group, and it matches the path that led him there: he has been running the group's main business for two and a half years.

Inman's account of his career gives the detail. Pareja joined eXp in 2022 as president of affiliated services. He then became chief strategy officer, and in April 2024 chief executive of eXp Realty, the brokerage itself. Before eXp he co-founded Remine, a company that was acquired by MLS Technology Holdings in 2021, and he is a former national president of NAHREP.

The parent he now leads is wider than the brokerage. Inman lists four businesses under AGNT, Inc.: eXp Realty, NextHome, FrameVR.io and SUCCESS Enterprises.

From 24 agents to a listed group

Sanford's own route is the company's history. HousingWire reports that he began working as an agent in 2002 and founded eXp in Bellingham, Washington, in 2009, with 24 agents.

The corporate structure changed several times in 2026. The group was known as eXp World Holdings until this year. It bought NextHome on 7 May 2026, adopted the Nasdaq ticker AGNT the same month, renamed itself AGNT, Inc. in June and moved its place of incorporation from Delaware to Texas, according to Inman. This week's eXpcon was the first held since the NextHome acquisition.

The sequence matters for reading Thursday's news. A founder who has just renamed and reincorporated his company, given it a new ticker and added a second brand to it, is handing over a structure he finished building only months ago.

The business Pareja inherits

The most recent published results are those of the second quarter of 2026, as Inman reports them. Revenue was US$1.4 billion, 11 per cent more than a year earlier. The group closed 132,497 real estate sales transactions, up 12 per cent. It counted 87,338 agents and brokers at the end of June, up 6 per cent. The quarter ended with a net loss of US$2.7 million.

So the group is growing in revenue, in transactions and in headcount, and it reported a small net loss while doing so. HousingWire, citing RealTrends Verified, puts eXp's 2025 activity at more than 340,000 transaction sides and more than US$150 billion in sales volume. A side is one end of a sale, the buyer's or the seller's, so a brokerage that represents both parties counts two.

The new chief executive does not expect the market to help. HousingWire reports that Pareja projects between 3.9 million and 4.1 million existing-home sales in the United States in 2027. Inman reports that, on stage at eXpcon, he said national transactions could fall to between 3.8 million and 3.9 million, which he described as the lowest level since 1995, and that rates could move into the 8 per cent range. The two ranges are not identical, and the two outlets do not say whether they refer to the same period; both are his own forecasts, not official figures.

Holly Mabery, the chief brokerage officer of eXp Realty, struck the same note. According to HousingWire, she said she is preparing agents for a very aggressive market over the next 18 months.

Pareja also arrives with a public position on one of the industry's live arguments. Inman notes that he and James Dwiggins, the co-founder of NextHome, have both criticised private-listing strategies, and that in May 2026 Pareja said he was assembling a coalition in favour of transparency.

Three launches at one convention

The products announced on Thursday are different in kind: one is a company, one is a financing programme for sellers and one is an internal tool for agents. What they share is that each depends on the size of the agent base. Pareja made the point himself: HousingWire, in its coverage of the launches, reports him as saying that the model works because the company is so large.

The convention also carried announcements on artificial intelligence, which are a separate subject.

Revenos Mortgage and Newrez

Revenos Mortgage is a joint venture between eXp Realty and Newrez LLC. HousingWire, RISMedia and Inman all report that it is expected to launch in early 2027, and Inman adds that the two companies' platforms are being integrated before that date.

It follows the end of an earlier arrangement. HousingWire recalls that in early September eXp decided to wind down Success Lending, its joint venture with Kind Lending. The figures HousingWire gives show a business that had been shrinking: Success Lending originated US$658 million in 2024 and US$526.5 million in 2025, a fall of about 20 per cent, and about US$270 million in the year to early September, the last figure coming from the data firm InGenius. NMLS records showed 113 sponsored loan officers across 22 active branches.

The new partner is of another size. Newrez is the lending arm of Rithm Capital. HousingWire describes it as the sixth-largest mortgage lender in the United States, with US$31.3 billion of production in the first half of 2026, up 11.5 per cent on a year earlier, and an expectation of about US$65 billion for the full year. Inman, citing Inside Mortgage Finance, places it among the five largest nonbank lenders and servicers; the two rankings measure different groups, since the second leaves banks out. Newrez services the loans of more than 4 million homeowners and already runs about 16 joint ventures and partnerships, HousingWire reports.

Pareja told HousingWire that eXp had looked for a partner with scale. Baron Silverstein, the president of Newrez, set the venture in his own company's plans, as quoted by Inman: "Revenos Mortgage represents the next evolution of our local market strategy." HousingWire reports him making a related point, that a local connection is what unlocks purchase volume.

A joint venture of this kind places a lender next to the agent at the moment a buyer needs a loan. The sources do not give its ownership split, its licensing timetable or the number of loan officers it will employ.

eXp Ready and ShowGo

eXp Ready is run with Notable, a company that finances the preparation of homes for sale. As Inman and HousingWire describe it, a seller can receive up to US$50,000 in unsecured funds for work done before listing, such as staging, repairs, painting and landscaping, and chooses the contractors. The application uses a soft credit pull, and the money can be available the same day. The programme is open to clients of eXp agents in the United States.

Notable has facilitated more than 40,000 home sales and issued more than US$1 billion in prep financing, Inman reports. To support the case for pre-listing work, eXp pointed to the 2025 Profile of Home Staging of the National Association of Realtors, in which nearly half of sellers' agents said staging reduced the time a home spent on the market and close to three in ten linked it to an increase of 1 to 10 per cent in the value offered. Those are agents' assessments in a survey, not measured sale prices, and neither outlet reports the fee or the interest rate.

ShowGo answers a smaller, daily problem: an agent who cannot attend a showing. It is a marketplace inside the eXp Hub, the company's internal platform, open only to eXp agents in the United States and Canada. The agent who needs cover posts the showing and sets the fee; open houses stay on a volunteer basis. Payments run through the brokerage, and Inman and HousingWire report that this design is meant to address regulators' concerns about agents paying one another directly. About 1,000 agents were already active on it before the launch.

What comes next

Only one date is on the calendar. Revenos Mortgage is expected to open in early 2027, once the platforms of eXp and Newrez are connected. The sources give no start date for eXp Ready or ShowGo beyond Thursday's announcement, and no figures yet on how many sellers or agents use them.

The first results published under the new chief executive will show whether the growth recorded in the second quarter continued. Until then, the measure of the handover is what Pareja said it was: the same brokerage, the same agents, a founder still in the chair, and a group that has chosen to add mortgage, seller financing and agent tools in a year when its own leader says home sales could fall to their lowest level in three decades.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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