Real estate agents in 2023 are all probably hearing about the massive overall company growth and explosive boom of the first ever cloud-based real estate company eXp Realty.

Agents and real estate professionals of all experience levels and production volumes are able to reap the rewards of the single most agent centric brokerage in history and 10X their business efforts and results by simply making one move in their real estate careers. The fastest growing brokerage in North America history is such an attraction in the real estate space that even large teams and brokerages of over 50-100 agents are moving their entire businesses to eXp Realty.

But what is it about eXp that makes it such an attractive brokerage for not only agents but also team leaders and brokerages alike? That comes down to the wealth building opportunities for agents that allow the average agent to build out a retirement plan through the company stock incentive program and revenue share business. The retention and outsourcing tools for team leaders and broker owners. And of course, the single most prestigious award in real estate, the eXp Realty ICON agent award for top producers.

eXp Agents are able to earn a number of exclusive benefits including equity and ownership through eXp World Holdings stock by receiving “common stock” given to the agent by the company for reaching certain milestones in their business and meeting eXp’s core values.

The eXp ICON agent award is an award designed for top producing agents with exceptional sales volume, top 1% in the entire world, as a loss leader and incentive program to join the company and become leaders for the other agents at the company in order to inspire and motivate agents at eXp Realty to propel their businesses.

The program was specifically designed so that the eXp ICON agents are getting the absolute best financial incentives in the world for real estate agents, and as a way to attract other talents to the company while breaking even. Hence, why it is called a loss leader program.

eXp ICON agents are able to earn their entire cap amount of $16,000 back in company stock.

In this post, we are going to go over exactly how you can become an eXp ICON agent and achieve “icon agent status” at eXp by giving you a complete program overview, the incentives of an eXp ICON agent, how the ICON program can be a massive attraction and retention tool for team leaders and broker owners, and a math example showing how eXp ICON agents are on a compensation plan that is mathematically equivalent to a transactional fee brokerage of $167 per transaction.

How You Can Become An eXp ICON Agent: ICON Program Overview

The first thing that we will cover in this post, is exactly how an agent at eXp can become an ICON agent and the requirements that the awards recipients must accomplish.

Here are the ICON agent Qualification Requirements at eXp and benefit details:

The production award requirements are simple. At eXp, an agent who is eligible to win the ICON agent award is someone who has capped at the company for their anniversary year. So meaning this agent has paid a total of $16,000 to the company in splits at an 80/20 commission split which is equivalent to around $2.66 Million in real estate sold at a 3% commission rate. Then, after this agent has capped, they must have completed an additional 20 transactions or sold a minimum production that generated $500,000 in gross commission income within their anniversary year.

Let’s say an agent has closed one $3 million home at a 3% commission rate. They would have capped at the company with one transaction. If they close an additional 20 transactions that year, so a total of 21 transactions, they would have become an ICON agent at eXp. If this agent was in a very high-priced point market with lower transactional rates per agent, then they can also become an ICON agent by grossing a total commission income that year of $500,000.

In order to earn the full incentives of an ICON Agent at eXp Realty, you must not only qualify on a transactional and production basis, but also meet 2 company-specific cultural requirements that has a number of factors as well to determine if you are a good cultural fit to be a good representative of the ICON program in order to receive the additional stock awards.

The first cultural requirement or cultural contributions that an eXp ICON agent must meet to earn their full stock award incentives is to become an instructor, trainer, or coach in the eXp University program or eXpand Mentorship program. A qualified ICON agent at eXp must complete one of the following tasks within 12 months of reaching ICON status in order to reach their first cultural requirement:

• Become an eXp certified mentor and serve the program for a full 12 months
• Become an eXp ICON Agent Instructor in eXp University and conduct 6 trainings within 12 months
• Participate in 10 ICONversations panels in eXp Univeristy within 12 months
• Become a current member of the ICON vetting committee and vet 10 or more ICON candidates within 12 months

The second cultural requirement is for the eXp ICON agent to attend both company events that the company holds each year in the year after their ICON status is met. This will allow the ICON agent to meet the “event attendance award” requirements.

Every year, eXp Realty holds two company-wide events, the eXp Shareholder Summit in the Spring, and EXPCON in the fall. Once an eXp ICON agent has attended both of these events in the year that they reached their ICON status, they receive the full incentives offered to an ICON agent.

Also, just as a general reminder to the readers, these are the requirements of eXp ICON agents in the US only. If you are an agent in one of the other 20 operational countries that eXp is currently open in, your requirements in numbers are slightly different but based on the same criteria (Capping then completing a certain volume of transactions after each year).

Remember that the ICON agent award is an annual award so that means that the criteria resets every year based on your anniversary date at the company just like your cap would. This also means that you are able to earn the incentives that come along with the ICON agent award every single year on a continuous basis.

eXp ICON Agent Incentives

So you know the requirements that you would need to become an eXp ICON agent, now we are going to go over just how being an ICON agent can benefit you and what financial incentives do ICON award recipients actually receive.

When an ICON agent reaches their requirements and has earned their full ICON eligibility at eXp Realty, they are awarded their entire $16,000 cap that they paid into the company back in the form of EXPI stock. This means that when an agent has done everything they need to do to become an ICON agent at eXp, they will actually get a $16,000 stock award from the company with a 3 year vesting period.

The eXp ICON agent stock award is paid to the ICON candidate in portions as they complete each requirement to becoming a full-fledged eXp ICON agent.

When an agent first qualifies to become an eXp ICON agent and reached their production requirements, they receive an $8,000 stock award from eXp on the 15th of the month that eXp Realty officially recognizes you as an ICON agent. Then when you complete your first cultural requirement and complete one of the 4 required tasks of participating as a coach, trainer, or mentor in eXp University or eXpand Mentorship, you will be awarded a $4,000 stock award, totaling to $12,000 in EXPI stock.

Lastly, you will receive two equal payments of a $2,000 stock award for each of the two annual events that you attend as an ICON agent within the 12 months of you being officially recognized as an ICON agent, amounting to $4,000 total if you attend both events. Adding that to the $12,000 of EXPI stock you earned from completing the other requirements, that is a total. of $16,000 in stock awards paid to you as an eXp ICON agent.

If you reach ICON status for 5 years and complete your full requirements as an ICON agent all 5 years, you would have received a total of $80,000 in stock awards. That is equivalent to a capping agent’s gross commission income in a year.

How the eXp ICON Agent Award Benefits Teams and Brokerages

Now that you have seen the requirements and incentives of the eXp ICON agent program, it is not hard to see why the individual real estate agent would be excited to join the company and the benefits it has for a solo sales agent. But what about team leaders and broker owners? In the past year, alone over 30 independent brokerages and 40 mega teams have partnered their businesses with eXp Realty, surely the ICON award has some benefit to these broker owners and team leaders as well right?

Of course it does. Not only does the eXp ICON agent program benefit brokerages and team leaders, but it is also one of the main reasons why broker owners and team leaders are seemingly flocking to eXp. The ICON program literally tripled eXp’s agent population the first year it was introduced!

To fully understand the magnitude of the eXp ICON award and what it can do for brokers and team leaders, we have to look at the program as both an attraction and a retention tool.

On the attraction side, the eXp ICON agent award is a built-in financial wealth-building incentive that brokers and team leaders have access to when they partner with eXp Realty in order to attract top-producing agents to their teams.

For many teams and brokerages, they are limited to their current budget and business model in terms of what incentives and special treatment they can offer leaders, individual agents, successful agents, and top producers to join their team or brokerage so many times, they run into the issue of not being able to compete against larger national or international companies that have the capital to offer similar loss leader programs to these agents.

When a team or brokerage partners with eXp Realty, they are now equipped with the single best and most financially sound top producer incentive in the real estate space so that they can now use this as an attraction incentive to recruit the top agents in the world to join their teams without having to incur losses or pay out of pocket.

The ICON Program is just one of the many additional opportunities for top agents with high business acumen can earn at eXp that helps team leaders retain them! Imagine having the ability to give your team members their full company’s cap in the form of stock ownership in the company!

To put this into perspective for broker-owners and team leaders who are looking to partner their businesses with eXp Realty, the eXp CON agent program was introduced in 2015. And from 2015 to 2016, the total agent at eXp Realty tripled within that time frame alone, proving that the eXp ICON agent award is one of, if not the most powerful agent attraction tool that the industry has ever seen.

On the retention side, brokers and team leaders are now able to keep and retain their best agents and leaders because they are now equipped with the single most powerful retention tool in the history of business, stock awards. Since stock awards have vesting periods, agents who wish to keep their gains must stay at their current company for a certain amount of time in order to keep the massive rewards that they have acquired.

In most cases, leaders and top producers in teams and brokerages outgrow their current teams and opt either for a new brokerage with a better-paying commission split or they will actually go out and start their own teams or brokerages and become your competitor.

If you partner your team or brokerage with eXp Realty, the eXp ICON award program will actually incentivize the top producing agents on your team to stay on your team instead of going and starting their own brokerage or team. It is truly one of the best ways to recruit and retain top talent.

Couple that with the outsourcing time management efficiency tools and revenue share team-building opportunities, team leaders and broker-owners can now attract and retain the best and most talented agents from around the world by partnering with eXp Realty.

How an eXp ICON Agent Only Pays $167 per Transaction

In this last section, I am going to show you a math breakdown of how an eXp ICON agent’s compensation numbers are equivalent to that of an agent at a flat fee brokerage who only has to pay $167 or less per transaction.

First, let’s remember that the criteria for becoming an ICON agent is to cap at eXp Realty and close an additional 20 transactions. If it takes you the agent 10 houses to cap, meaning that you have sold 10 houses at $266,000 apiece at 3% commission, you would have paid $16,000 into the company in splits and capped at the company for the year. Once you’ve capped at the company, you are required to pay a transactional fee of $250 that caps at $5,000 per year. So as an ICON agent who would have had to close an additional 20 transactions after capping, you would have paid 20x$250=$5,000 into the company in transaction fees.

When you add that to your original $16,000 cap, that’s a total of $21,000 that you would have paid to the company that year. Now there are other broker review and errors and commissions insurance fees that are charged per transaction, but they are quite minimal and does not affect the math example as much from a general standpoint. If you would like a full breakdown of the compensation plan and the different fees, feel free to reach out to me by clicking the button below.

Ok, so now that you have closed 30 houses and have paid a total of $21,000 to eXp Realty as an ICON agent, it is time for you to get your $16,000 back in stock awards. Subtracting the $16,000 stock award that you will receive as an ICON agent at eXp, you are now left with only $5,000 that you would have paid into the company each year that you are an ICON agent. Divide $5,000 into 30 and you are left with $167 per transaction paid for each of your first 30 transactions each year that you are an ICON agent at eXp Realty.

After you have paid $5,000 into the company in transactional fees after capping, you now only have to pay $75 per transaction for the rest of your transactions for the rest of the year. So if you closed a total of 40 homes that year, you would have paid $167 per transaction for the first 30 transactions and $75 for the last 10.

Now that you’ve seen the math breakdown of what it looks like for a top producing ICON agent to be at eXp Realty, it is easy to see why so many top producing agents and leaders of the industry are coming to join eXp Realty in droves at a time. Not only are they able to take advantage of the technology, outsourcing tools, different income streams, and benefits that you would usually get a big name or big box brokerage, they are also able to keep more money in their pocket per transaction when they break the sales model down mathematically.

Become an ICON Agent Today!

So now that you have seen all of the many benefits that the eXp ICON program has for both the agent and the team leader, it is very easy to see how eXp Realty has been able to grow as quickly as they have as a real estate company, not just in the US, but also in the world.

For agents and leaders to immediately receive a raise and the many benefits of eXp Realty for them to capitalize on their skillsets and build wealth through multiple income streams, eXp Realty isn’t only attracting the average agent to the company, but actually attracting the top 1% of agents in the world as the first ever real estate cloud brokerage!

To learn more about how you can become an ICON agent today(including some positive changes to the program) and earn more money, keep more money, build wealth, earn residual income, and build multiple income streams, simply click below and book a free strategy session with the leading group at eXp Realty, that gives agents the additional tools, training, and resources that are completely unique and exclusive to us.

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