Leo Pareja became chief executive officer of AGNT, Inc. on Oct. 8, taking the top job at the parent of eXp Realty from founder Glenn Sanford, who stays on as chairman of the board. The company announced the change the same morning it rolled out four products at its eXpcon conference in Salt Lake City β a mortgage joint venture with Newrez, a seller-financing program, a showing-coverage marketplace, and an artificial-intelligence strategy built on the Model Context Protocol.
Pareja, 44, has run eXp Realty since April 2024. He joined the company in July 2022 as president of affiliated services and became chief strategy officer that November. Before that he was co-founder, president and chief executive of Remine, Inc., which he led from January 2016 until its acquisition by MLS Technology Holdings in October 2021.
Sanford, who founded the company in 2009, recommended the change to the board on Oct. 2, according to AGNT’s Form 8-K. The directors acted by unanimous written consent on Oct. 6 and made the appointment effective Oct. 8. Sanford steps down as CEO and from all other employment positions with the company and its subsidiaries on that date; he will be paid the standard non-employee director package and, the filing says, is not expected to qualify as an independent director.
“Leo has earned this moment,” Sanford said in the company’s announcement, adding that he has “complete confidence” in Pareja as board chairman and as a shareholder. Randall Miles, the board’s vice chairman, said the handoff is “the product of years of deliberate, thoughtful succession planning by our Board.” The filing does not describe any disagreement.
The terms
Pareja’s base salary rises to $1.8 million under a five-year agreement that renews automatically for one-year terms unless either side gives 90 days’ notice, the 8-K says. His promotional equity grant is a performance-based option over 1,060,814 shares at target, vesting from 0% to 200% on relative total shareholder return measured over five years, plus 573,588 restricted stock units vesting quarterly over three years. From 2027 the annual award splits evenly between options and RSUs, with the 2027 grant carrying a grant-date value of $4,897,500. Termination without cause or for good reason triggers 18 months of base salary and up to 12 months of COBRA coverage, subject to a release.
Four announcements in one morning
The product slate is where the strategy shows. eXp Realty and Newrez, a Rithm Capital company, are forming Revenos Mortgage, a joint venture that will connect eXp agents’ clients to financing and then service the loans. Launch is planned for early 2027; neither company disclosed the ownership split or any financial terms. The release describes Newrez, citing an industry ranking, as one of the five largest nonbank mortgage lenders and primary servicers.
“Revenos Mortgage represents the next evolution of our local market strategy,” said Baron Silverstein, president of Newrez.
eXp Ready, available now across the U.S., advances sellers up to $50,000 for pre-listing work β staging, repairs, cleaning β with no restriction on which contractor or retailer they use. Repayment comes out of closing proceeds, and the release says nothing is due until the home closes or 12 months pass, whichever is first, with a one-time fee and fixed interest on the amount drawn. The loans are made by Notable Finance, LLC or Quorum Federal Credit Union and are subject to underwriting; eXp says Notable has financed more than $1 billion of prep work across more than 40,000 home sales.
ShowGo turns the informal practice of swapping showing coverage into a marketplace inside the eXp Hub. Agents post a showing and set a fee, or claim one; open houses are volunteer-based with no fee attached. It is live for eXp agents in the U.S. and Canada, and the company said nearly 1,000 agents were using it before the announcement. Pareja described the aim as “one place to post, claim, agree and get paid.”
Not another chatbot
The most consequential announcement may be the least product-shaped. Under “MCP First, AI of Choice,” eXp is publishing Model Context Protocol servers β for the Hub, My eXp, eXp University and eXp Divisions β so an agent can authorize a connection and then query production, leads, transactions, training progress and CRM records from inside Claude or ChatGPT rather than a brokerage-branded assistant. Canva is connected at launch for marketing content; Lofty, BoldTrail and Cloze are supported on the CRM side, with Follow Up Boss and Sisu listed as coming soon.
“We are not trying to out-build the world’s largest AI companies; that would be foolish,” Pareja said. “We’re connecting to them.” He also framed the protocol as an entry point to a larger rebuild: “MCP is the front door, and AGNT OS is the whole house,” referring to an internal systems overhaul built on eXp International’s Nexus platform and targeted for early 2027.
The approach is no longer unusual. Lofty opened its own platform to brokerages’ AI agents through an MCP server earlier this year, and the protocol is becoming the connective tissue between real estate software and general-purpose models.
What Pareja inherits
AGNT β the renamed eXp World Holdings, and the parent of eXp Realty, NextHome, FrameVR.io and SUCCESS Enterprises β reported record second-quarter revenue of $1.4 billion on Aug. 4, up 11% year over year, with adjusted EBITDA of $25.7 million against $11.2 million a year earlier and a net loss of $2.7 million. The platform counted 87,338 agents and brokers at June 30, up 6% from a year earlier, and closed 132,497 transactions worth $60.5 billion in the quarter, up 12% and 15%.
Pareja’s own release language points at the pressure behind the product push: eXp Ready is pitched at a market where “buyers are more selective and homes are sitting longer.” Growing agent count while 30-year mortgage rates sit above 7% is the job the board just handed him, and the Oct. 8 slate is the argument that tooling β financing, coverage, AI plumbing β is how a cloud brokerage keeps recruiting through a slow market.
