While real estate brokerages are known for helping consumers buy and sell homes, many also choose to offer core services such as mortgage lending, title insurance and home warranties.
“Ultimately, the real estate transaction is one of the most emotional and exciting times for a buyer or seller, but it is also an incredibly complex process and there are a lot of moving parts, with a lot of different team members that have to come together in order to get to a successful closing,” said Chris Kelly, the president and CEO of HomeServices of America.
“Our guiding light is, how can we make the process less stressful and simplify it for the consumer by pulling all of these disparate services into one team?”
he 2025 RealTrends Verified rankings again examined the number of core services transactions among submitting brokerages. Once again, HomeServices of America topped the list by executing a total of 136,810 core services transactions in 2024.
A total of 49 brokerages submitted core services data. The companies were ranked by the total number of core services transactions completed, which includes mortgage lending, title insurance, home warranties, homeowners insurance and escrow policies.
The rankings rely on internal company data that has not been verified by third-party sources.
Historically, Anywhere Advisors and Hanna Holdings have submitted data for these rankings and were frequently near the top of the leaderboard, but they chose not to submit data this year.
HomeServices of America was the only firm to report transactions in all five service categories.
“We were really founded on this principle of offering everything,” Kelly said. “A lot of companies have added on these services after the fact because they want to drive revenue, but when we were founded — you can see it on the original flywheel sketch — it was under the full-service model, so it is 100% cooked into our DNA.”
Taking second place in the 2025 rankings is the Iowa-based Ruhl & Ruhl Realtors. The firm submitted data in both the mortgage lending and homeowners insurance categories for a total of 20,194 transactions.
But the firm’s strong suit was clearly homeowners insurance as 19,551 of those transactions came from that category. This was by far the highest number of homeowners insurance transactions among any company in the rankings.
It’s not uncommon for brokerages to specialize in one type of core service offering.
For example, Samson Companies — the parent of brokerage Samson Properties — also owns Cardinal Title Group and specializes in title and escrow. Despite offering services in only two categories, Samson nabbed the No. 4 spot with 11,693 core services transactions. Third place went to Real Estate One Family of Companies, which recorded 15,206 core services transactions.
“Title is the one that the public knows the least about and the one they are most looking for a recommendation from their agent, so we felt like from the beginning, that it was the easiest path to a good capture rate,” said Donny Samson, the CEO of Samson Properties.
“Mortgage is another good core service, but everyone knows a lender, so they don’t need a referral. And lending, you need a lot of capital upfront to start, so it was an easier path for us to get into title.”
Tim Milam’s firm, Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Advantage, rounded out the top five with a total of 8,910 transactions — all from the title insurance category. Despite only submitting data for title, Milam said his firm offers all five categories of core services.
“Back in 2001, my wife and I went to buy a new car. And when we left, I turned to my wife and said, ‘Think about what just happened today — we bought this car and the dealership got it financed, they called the insurance company to take care of that and they are going to take care of the title transfer.’ We went into one place and everything was taken care of,” Milam said.
“That was when I sat down and decided we needed to do this in real estate. We started with mortgage and then got into title, and eventually we got into insurance and warranties, all by emulating what we experienced as customers buying that new car.”
While offering core services to clients can certainly aid in a smoother transaction, the revenue generated by core services operations is another bonus for brokerages, whose margins are ever-shrinking.
“If I have a stool, the more legs I have on it, the better balance it has, so as we go through different real estate cycles, different segments of our business can help shoulder more of the weight at different times,” Kelly said.
“We have an insurance segment that doesn’t necessitate an actual real estate transaction to generate revenue — we generate revenue every year through renewals and that doesn’t require a real estate transaction to close, so it is good stabilization when overall national unit numbers are down because of the rate environment or inventory or affordability challenges. Title is also pretty stable. But really it is about a stabilization of the enterprise through different types of markets.”
If a brokerage is contemplating adding a core service to its business, Samson said leaders should consider the initial startup costs and not seek to save money by skimping on staff.
“My advice is to make sure you do it well,” Samson said. “If you do it poorly, you can hurt your reputation with your agents. But if you do it well, all things can be better. If you don’t have great staff, then they aren’t going to produce a great performance and then your agents are not going to want to refer your company again. And that can be a bit of a black eye on your brokerage.”
He added that brokerage leaders should also be aware that their core services businesses should be stand-alone companies.
“They have to still work hard to earn the business of your Realtors but also other Realtors in the industry,” Samson said. “They need to be present, teach classes, provide advice and counsel, and not rest on their laurels. … Every single Realtor and every single client has free will and you need to earn that business.”
A full look at the 2025 RealTrends Verified Core Services rankings is below:
First Time Home Buyer FAQs - Via HousingWire.com
