Building a Team
How to Start a Real Estate Team: Structure, First Hires and Margins
Updated
Bottom line: Start a team once your volume outruns you. Hand off admin work first, build a client base big enough to share before adding agents, put the rules in writing, and plan for a heavy marketing line.
When is a producing agent ready to start a team?
A team starts with your own volume. RE/MAX News, quoting team leaders in 2014, put the moment at a production level where others can carry part of your transaction load.
The same advice adds a second test. The people you bring in should also be able to draw on your experience, your client base and your reputation.
What should the first hire take off your plate?
Administrative work goes first. Those team leaders said to hand it off so your hours go to customers.
On HousingWire's description, transaction coordinators run the administrative side of a deal: the paperwork, the deadlines and the compliance requirements.
Timing matters as much as the role. The same team leaders said to add a person only once the team is completely overwhelmed.
When do buyer agents and other roles come in?
Agents come after clients. RE/MAX News reported advice to build a large client base before recruiting, because you need leads to offer the agents you bring on.
HousingWire notes that larger teams can include showing assistants and inside sales agents, with ISAs working lead generation and follow-up.
Put together, the order runs: admin support, then a client base deep enough to share, then agents, then the specialist roles larger teams carry.
How should the team be structured and paid?
HousingWire's December 2024 guide starts from the premise that no single structure fits every real estate team.
On splits, the same HousingWire guide says they are usually built to pay the team leader for the resources and support the leader provides.
Whatever structure you pick, write the rules down early. A brokerage leader writing in HousingWire in 2025 found it useful to be explicit about performance standards, lead distribution, team roles and client handoffs.
What margins do teams keep, and where does the money go?
In HousingWire's report on the 2021 RealTrends Team Profitability Study, teams kept an average gross margin of 61.8%, against 13.8% for the brokerages RealTrends benchmarks.
Size barely moved that figure. Smaller teams ran higher margins, but the study found the gap between the smallest and the largest teams was tiny.
The cost side is the marketing line. Per the same HousingWire report, advertising and marketing took 18% of team gross margin, against roughly 2.4% for brokerages.
Keep the sample in mind. The surveyed teams averaged $3.33 million in gross commission revenue, 10.9 years in business, 13.9 agents and 4.5 employees.
What does Keller Williams Southwest put behind a new team leader?
Our office at 1650 Highway 6 in Sugar Land has 14 people behind you: marketing, technology, a productivity coach and compliance.
You get weekly one-on-one coaching, classroom training and a yearly business plan reviewed every month.
A seat at the table comes with it: a 12-agent Associate Leadership Council sets office strategy. Jana Hayes is our Team Leader and Operating Partner.
Filed in The team.
Questions & answers
What do Sugar Land agents ask about this?
What should I ask an agent before they join my first team?
Ask what they liked and what they did not like about past teams. Coach Tom Ferry suggested that question in a 2015 RE/MAX News summary of his team-building advice. He counted any team the candidate has been on, whether a high school team or one in business. A candidate with no real estate team behind them still has an answer to give you.
The same summary names three archetypes of real estate professional: the artist, the operator and the entrepreneur. Listen for which one a candidate describes, and decide which one you are yourself. Put the past-team question to administrative hires as well as agents. Your first hire is likely to be admin support, so that conversation comes first.
Can I start a team if I have never managed anyone?
Yes, and Tom Ferry's advice starts with candor about it. In a 2015 RE/MAX News summary, he said that if you can admit you lack managerial skills, you can accept that you are learning on the job. Being honest about the gap is what lets you treat the early stretch of running a team as training rather than as a test you have to pass.
Learning on the job goes faster with a standing review. At Keller Williams Southwest, weekly one-on-one coaching and a yearly business plan reviewed every month give you a regular place to bring the management questions a first team raises.
Do I keep closing my own deals while I build the team?
The agent RE/MAX News profiled in 2024 did. Robert Dekanski kept completing transactions after starting his team, while also bringing agents on board and supporting their businesses. Before that, as an individual agent pushing his own limits, he had begun picking out the support roles that would add to his productivity.
The order is the useful part. Dekanski named the roles first, then filled them. He joined RE/MAX in 2007 and began hiring for those roles under a team structure. That sequence matches the 2014 advice from other RE/MAX team leaders: support staff before agents, and agents only once there are leads to give them.