Latest Swanepoel Power 200 Names Zillow CEO Rich Barton as Real Estate's Most Powerful Leader

The Swanepoel Power 200 (SP200), the definitive ranking of the residential real estate industry's most powerful and influential leaders, has named Zillow Group Co-Founder and CEO Rich Barton as the most powerful leader in 2020. Published by T3 Sixty, the seventh annual edition of the report is out today at sp200.com.

The four most powerful executives after Barton are, in order: Keller Williams Realty CEO Gary Keller, HomeServices of America CEO Ron Peltier, Realogy CEO Ryan Schneider, and Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman.

T3 Sixty extensively analyzes industry executives and C-suite leaders of all significant, large and strategically important companies in the residential real estate brokerage industry to build each year's list. The process starts with over 3,000 executives and involves a mix of quantitative and qualitative components used to review leaders, including recent developments at their company, their tenure, their role in their organization and its production, and vigorous thought and debate about their power and influence in the industry.

Barton ascends to the top of the 2020 list based on his full-force return to lead the company he co-founded in 2005 as CEO in 2019. He has brought a bold new vision and direction to Zillow focused on reengineering the real estate transaction around the iBuying business model with the company's new homebuying and selling Homes division, which the company projects can produce $20 billion in annual revenue.

The most powerful female leaders on the 2020 list include, in order: Hanna Holdings CEO Helen Hanna Casey, Windermere Real Estate managing principal Jill Wood; and Sherry Chris, the new CEO of Realogy Expansion Brands. The most powerful and influential executives in the Realtor association world, in order, are: NAR CEO Bob Goldberg, Houston Association of Realtors CEO Bob Hale and California Regional MLS CEO Art Carter.

"We publish the SP200 each year to help industry participants gain a better understanding of the scope and extent of the many significant companies and leaders that shape their industry," said T3 Sixty Chairman and CEO Stefan Swanepoel. "It is fascinating to track how different leaders and roles shift every year. The insights of developments on the highest levels of the industry at any given time provide invaluable strategic insight of who you should be working with, learning from and who to watch out for.

"Ten T3 Sixty executives collectively spend some 500 hours analyzing and comparing important moves, acquisitions and key shifts in 2019 that are expected to define 2020," Swanepoel added.

Examples of significant changes among leaders in the 2020 report include:

• Glenn Sanford, CEO of eXp World Holdings, which exploded past 25,000 agents in 2019, jumped from No. 32 in 2019 into the top 20 at No. 15, in company with other well-known, established CEOs.
• Eric Wu, co-founder and CEO of Opendoor, pioneer of the revolutionary iBuyer model, continues his steady rise in 2020, earning a slot in the top 20 at No. 14, up from No. 35 in 2019.
• Adam Contos, RE/MAX CEO, edges up two slots to No. 6 in 2020 with his continued and strategic purchases of technology companies, booj and most recently First.io.

The final findings of this extensive annual research can be found at sp200.com. The SP200 includes 247 CEOs, C-suite leaders and other real estate players with significant influence. The rankings are also organized into subcategories, including the top association and MLS executives, leading women, leading technologists, and the official annual trendsetter list of people to watch.

The SP200 leader rankings is the first of five annual lists T3 Sixty publishes every year. It also publishes:

• A list ranking the nation's largest associations and MLSs (in February)
• A ranking of the industry's most notable technology vendors (in March)
• A ranking of the nation's largest franchisors and holding companies (in April)
• A ranking of the nation's 1,000 largest brokerage companies (in May)

Together, these publications comprise the Real Estate Almanac, the most wide-ranging compendium of its kind in the industry.

"Comprehensive quality data is the cornerstone of smart decisions and with the constantly shifting landscaping, the Real Estate Almanac will become the industry's authority," said Stefan Swanepoel, himself a New York Times best-selling author, and author and co-author of over 52 books and reports.