A search for a home in France shaped Real Brokerage CEO Tamir Poleg’s view on listing fragmentation

When Tamir Poleg bought a property in France, the process gave him a glimpse of what he hopes the U.S. and Canadian real estate markets can avoid — listing fragmentation.

To find the home, Poleg said he had to search across multiple websites, many of which had outdated, inaccurate or incomplete information. The experience was frustrating enough that it shaped how he thinks about one of the biggest debates now playing out in U.S. real estate: listing fragmentation.

“I bought a property in France, and in order to find the property, I had to go through so many different websites with so much false information, or inaccurate or just outdated information,” Poleg, CEO of The Real Brokerage, said on the RealTrending podcast. “It was just not a great experience.”

That experience is now informing Poleg’s view of the industry at a moment when Real is preparing to acquire REMAX, private listings are dominating industry conversations, brokerages are rethinking scale and artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape how agents work.

REMAX deal is not simply about size

According to Poleg, its about combining Real’s technology and growth with one of the most recognized brands in real estate.

“Remax has this iconic brand, they’re known everywhere, they have the scale, and Real has the growth, and Real has the technology,” Poleg said.

The deal surprised many in the industry, in part because Real is widely viewed as a tech-forward, cloud-based brokerage, while REMAX is a legacy franchise brand with a long-established office and broker-owner model. But Poleg said Real had been looking at REMAX for years and saw the two companies as highly complementary.

“When we started to try and analyze why REMAX was kind of slowing down in North America, we realized that it’s because of a tech gap, it’s because of a value proposition that needed a little bit of a boost, it’s because their franchisees/brokers are struggling a little bit with margins, and this is exactly what we thought we could help with,” he said.

Poleg said Real’s technology platform was designed to help brokerages operate more efficiently. Bringing that to REMAX, he said, could strengthen the value proposition for franchisees and agents while preserving the REMAX brand.

“If you’re an agent that seeks more freedom, flexibility, you’re a little bit more tech savvy, you want to work from anywhere, you can join under the real model,” Poleg said. “If you’re an agent that is looking for more of a brand name office location or office present, you want your broker close to you. You can join other REMAX, but now we can offer both models under the same umbrella.”

Cultures are similar, says Poleg

Despite the obvious differences between the two companies, Poleg pushed back on the idea that the cultures are too far apart. He said both companies are focused on agent productivity and helping agents succeed.

“Both companies are focused on productivity, agent productivity. Both companies are kind in nature. We’re trying to disconnect ourselves from the politics in the industry, we’re trying to focus on our businesses, so there are a lot of similarities,” he said.

Private listings? Start with agents

That “stay out of politics” approach also helps explain why Real has remained relatively quiet during the private listings debate. As major brokerages, portals and MLSs argue over inventory access and listing control, Poleg said Real started with its agents.

“The first thing we did when this whole private listing, private exclusive, free marketing started to be a discussion, we just reached out to our agent population and asked them, Is this meaningful to you? Do you want us to do something about it,” he said.

The response, he said, was clear.

“About 95% of our agents on the Real side said our clients are not even asking us about this, like this is not even a discussion,” Poleg said. “Out of the remaining 5%, some 50% of them, so 2.5%, said that their clients are somewhat interested in having a discussion about private listing.”

For now, Poleg said, that told Real not to rush into the debate. But he is watching the issue closely, especially as listing access becomes more fragmented.

“I think we’re getting to the point of no return on this, and I think that very soon, and when I mean very soon, it could be in a matter of a few months, we’ll be at a point where fragmentation is beyond our control, and we cannot get the genie back in the bottle,” Poleg said.

Concerns about the consumer

His concern is that consumers could lose easy access to accurate, comprehensive listing data — a hallmark of the U.S. real estate system compared with other countries.

“I hope that we do not end up this way in the U.S. and Canada,” he said. “But I think that in terms of fragmentation and everything that’s happening with the MLSs and the kind of the large forces that are pushing in different directions, I think that it’s becoming inevitable to find ourselves in a situation which could be less in favor of consumers’ ability to find data, accurate data in an easy way.”

AI could reshape the industry

AI is another force that could reshape the industry, but Poleg said the technology should be used to improve the transaction, not remove the agent from it.

“At the end of the day, AI should help create better experiences, both for agents and for consumers,” he said.

For Real, that means using AI to eliminate friction, create transparency and reduce the time it takes to move from search to closing. Poleg said he believes Real is “far ahead of everybody else when it comes to AI capabilities,” but he also warned that many companies underestimate what it takes to build AI tools that are actually useful.

“Everybody can use AI. Everybody uses ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini on a very superficial level,” he said. “I think that when it gets interesting is when you’re thinking about agentic use of AI and building agents that are focused on one specific task.”

At Real, Poleg said the company is building multiple AI agents, each designed for a specific function, such as drafting contracts or creating social media content. The long-term goal is to give agents one entry point that can coordinate many AI tools behind the scenes.

“The future is us as real estate professionals employing AI agents as if they were our employees, and they become specialized in one specific task, which eventually they will perform better than we perform,” he said.

AI is not a threat to agents

But Poleg does not see that as a threat to agents. Instead, he sees AI as a productivity layer that allows agents to serve more clients while spending more time on the parts of the transaction that require human trust.

“People will still need humans to hold their hands and guide them through that somewhat complicated, highly emotional transaction that they’re going through,” he said. “As humans, we want to be guided by humans, because this is who we trust.”

The goal, he said, is not to replace agents. It is to make them more capable.

“I think that agents are here to stay, but we can turn agents into super agents with the right technology and the right help, and that’s what we’re going to try and do,” Poleg said.

Future look

Looking ahead, Poleg does not expect the industry to change overnight. After more than 20 years in real estate and more than 12 years building Real, he said he has learned that change often takes longer than people expect.

“In three years, things will look almost the same,” he said.

But over a longer time horizon, he believes the transaction itself has to change. Consumers do not want process, paperwork or uncertainty, he said. They want a home.

“At the end of the day, what buyers want is a home, and we, as an industry, we don’t provide them homes,” Poleg said. “We deliver a set of tasks and paperwork that they don’t understand, and the lengthy process that they’re concerned about, and that has to change.”

For Real, the next step is closing the REMAX transaction and beginning the work of bringing the companies together while keeping the two brands distinct. Poleg said Real will remain focused on improving the agent experience, the consumer experience and watching closely as the industry navigates consolidation, AI, MLS policy and listing data control.

“This is what we’re going to be focused on for the foreseeable future,” he said.

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.