Ron Peltier Tops Annual List of Real Estate's Most Powerful Leaders

The Swanepoel Power 200 (SP200), the definitive ranking of the residential real estate industry's 200 most powerful and influential leaders, has named HomeServices of America Chairman and CEO Ron Peltier real estate's most powerful person in 2019. HomeServices of America has been a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary since 1999. The annual study was released Tuesday by T3 Sixty.

Keller Williams Realty CEO Gary Keller, Zillow Group CEO Spencer Rascoff, Realogy CEO Ryan Schneider and Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman round out the industry's five most powerful leaders.

Peltier ascends to No. 1 after ranking third and fourth the past two years, respectively, based on his company's tremendous, acquisition-fueled growth and its vast access to capital, the key driver in today's rapidly changing residential real estate industry. With its blockbuster acquisitions of Long & Foster Real Estate, Ebby Halliday Realtors and BHHS Florida Real Estate the firm's brokerage wing's annual sales total over $125 billion, second only to Realogy's NRT.

Gary Keller, last year's No. 1 and CEO of the nation's largest real estate franchise brand, secured the No. 2 spot amidst large corporate repositioning and senior management changes, while Zillow Group's steady revenue growth, despite industry pushback on some new initiatives, kept Rascoff at No. 3.

In addition to the main power list which includes short bios, company stats and photos for each person ranked, the SP200 also recognizes leaders in five specific categories: Trendsetters, Women, Association and MLS leaders, Technology executives and powerful people outside residential real estate who have enormous industry impact.

This is the sixth edition of the SP200, which is published by the real estate research and management consulting firm T3 Sixty each January. The firm uses a rigorous three-part methodology to rank leaders with the aid of organizational charts and proprietary data from leaders and their representatives and the firm's Mega 1000 report, the annual ranking of industry brokerages, franchisors and holding companies by size. T3 Sixty analyzes over 3,000 industry CEOs, executives, and leaders to build each year's list.

T3 Sixty considers eight criteria in ranking leaders on the list: the office leaders hold, their tenure, the size of the company they lead, its financial resources, their significance and impact on the industry, their company's activities in the previous year, other activities outside their own company and their personal power and influence.

"With the SP200, we aim to hold a mirror up to the industry, reflecting residential real estate back to itself by noting who wields the most power and influence (and in what order), whether by position, personal power, employee count, reputation and trajectory," said T3 Sixty Chairman and CEO Stefan Swanepoel.

Big changes and rising stars in the top 20 ranked leaders include:

• No. 6: Robert Reffkin and Ori Allon, co-founders of well-capitalized Compass, who have raised over $1 billion in equity funding, led by Softbank.
• No. 8: Adam Contos, the new CEO of Re/Max after legendary co-founder Dave Liniger stepped down after 45 years. Re/Max is the largest real estate franchise in the world.
• No. 12: Ryan Gorman, the 40-year-old CEO of NRT LLC. With annual sales of over $178 billion, NRT is the world's largest real estate brokerage.

See the full online ranking here.