“Sucks For Denver”: Real-REMAX deal moves a Denver icon’s headquarters to Miami
Real Brokerage is buying REMAX in an $880 million deal that will move the franchisor’s headquarters to Miami after 50 years in Colorado.
Miami-based Real Brokerage Inc. has agreed to acquire REMAX Holdings in a deal valued at approximately $880 million. It will move the headquarters of one of Denver’s most storied corporate names to Florida after more than 50 years in Colorado, the companies announced Monday.
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The deal would unite two publicly traded brokerages – Real (NASDAQ: REAX) and REMAX (NYSE: RMAX) – under a new entity called Real REMAX Group, headquartered in Miami. REMAX’s Denver operations will remain intact, the companies said. Real CEO Tamir Poleg will lead the combined company, which will continue to trade on NASDAQ under the ticker REAX.
“Real REMAX Group will be headquartered in Miami with significant operations in the Denver area,” the companies say in a press release announced the merger on Monday.
Inman has contacted REMAX for comment. This story will be updated as and when comments are received.
Miles high roots
REMAX was founded in Denver in 1973 by Dave Liniger and his then-future wife, Gail Main, on a then-radical idea: let agents keep almost all their commissions and instead pay their broker a portion of the office expenses. Within five years, REMAX was the largest real estate company in Colorado. Within ten years it had invaded Canada and expanded across North America.
Liniger, now chairman of REMAX’s board of directors, controls approximately 38 percent of the company’s voting rights and has agreed to vote his shares in favor of the transaction.
At the end of 2025, REMAX had 519 employees, about half of which were in the Denver area. The companies pledged that “significant operations” will remain in Denver, but did not provide details on headcount.
REMAX has been headquartered on South Syracuse Street in Denver since 2008. The building is owned by Kore Investments of Greenwood Village, Colorado, which paid $115.2 million for the 14-story, 242,000-square-foot building in 2018.
REMAX has already reduced its footprint there. In 2021, REMAX executives said the company reduced the number of floors it occupied from nine to five.
Corporate exodus from Colorado
Chad Ochsner, broker and owner of RE/MAX Alliance Group – the Arvada, Colorado-based franchise that posted $3.5 billion in sales last year – told the Denver Gazette a Zoom call with REMAX corporate after the announcement offered some reassurance: Some operations and staff could remain in Denver. But the company’s iconic global headquarters in Denver may not be part of that picture.
Ochsner said it too Gazette that he and other executives from the Colorado REMAX franchise were blindsided by the deal and scrambled to answer a barrage of questions from agents, from whether the fees would change to whether they would need new yard signs.
The deal marks another departure of the company’s headquarters to Colorado, a trend that has become an uncomfortable pattern for the state in recent years.
“Technically, their stock will be listed as a Miami company,” Ochsner told the newspaper Gazette. “Bad for Denver.”
The REMAX deal comes amid growing alarm about the corporate exodus in Colorado. In February, Palantir Technologies, one of the state’s most valuable publicly traded companies, moved its headquarters from Denver to suburban Miami after five years in Colorado, which offers little explanation.
Earlier this month, This is reported by the Colorado Chamber of Commerce a net loss of 34 public company headquarters since 2022, with 70 departures exceeding 36 arrivals.
The great ones get bigger
The combined business of Real and REMAX would have generated about $2.3 billion in annual revenue by 2025, the companies said. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to regulatory and shareholder approval.
The deal comes amid an accelerating wave of consolidation in the brokerage industry. Compass’s $1.6 billion acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate, parent company of Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Corcoran, Sotheby’s International Realty and ERA, among others, was completed in January, bringing that company to nearly 340,000 agents in approximately 120 countries.
Real’s move for REMAX is the next big step in an industry that is rapidly reorganizing around platform scale, technology investment and global reach. REMAX and Motto Mortgage will continue to operate under their existing brands following completion of the transaction.
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