What next for UK side of US agency as chief exec quits?

Gary Keller is stepping down from his post as chief executive of the global Keller Williams estate agency empire.

Although operating chiefly in the US the agency has in recent years tried to break into the UK market, and this was seen as one of Gary Keller's key objectives for the firm.

Leading figures in the UK operation now include former Countrywide director Ben Taylor and Emoov founder Russell Quirk.

Gary Keller’s global leadership of the firm - which operates a strict training-based approach to self employed agency and sales techniques - has been highly regarded by the company’s UK recruits.

Keller founded the agency 37 years ago when he was in his 20s. He will now serve as executive chairman. He has told his franchisees and staff that his retirement was something he had been “working toward for many months” with the hope that it would give him time “to get back to my passion, which is placing my focus on the vision for our industry.”

This is not the first tine Keller has stepped away from the top table: in 1995 he quit only to return in 2018 to lead a tech-oriented restructuring of the company.

In July Ben Taylor, chief executive of KW UK, said he now had 250 agents across this country working from 11 market centres - the centralised hub system it operates, encouraging self-employed agents to use the centres as offices if they don’t wish to work from home.

In the UK, those self-employed agents retain 63 per cent of their commission at first with the rest funding the overheads and support services.

Once their overall income passes a specific threshold, agents retain 90 per cent of their commission fees with the remainder going to Keller Williams.

The international Keller Williams network, which recently opened market centres in Serbia and the Dominican Republic, now has over around 11,000 agents and more than 230 market centres outside of North America.