Marcus & Millichap swung back to profitability in the second quarter, posting its strongest results in more than two years as commercial real estate sales and financing activity picked up, the brokerage said in preliminary results released Aug. 6.
Total revenue reached $202.9 million, up 17.8% from $172.3 million a year earlier. Diluted earnings per share came in at 10 cents, reversing a 28-cent-per-share loss in the second quarter of 2025. Operating income was $2.2 million, compared with a $9.0 million operating loss a year ago.
Brokerage and financing both accelerate
Brokerage commissions, the company’s largest revenue line, rose 18.1% to $167.0 million, while financing fees grew 15.3% to $30.3 million. Total transaction volume across the quarter reached $14.1 billion on 2,306 deals β $9.5 billion in real estate brokerage sales (1,530 transactions), $3.6 billion in financing (480 transactions) and $1.0 billion in other transactions including consulting and advisory work (296 transactions).
“Our strong second quarter is the culmination of numerous internal initiatives to expand our client outreach and more favorable catalysts for CRE sales and financing,” said Hessam Nadji, Marcus & Millichap’s president and CEO.
For the first six months of 2026, revenue totaled $374.4 million, up 18.0% from $317.3 million in the same period a year earlier. The company posted net income of $0.8 million for the half, compared with a $15.5 million loss in the first half of 2025, with diluted EPS of 2 cents versus a 40-cent loss. Adjusted EBITDA turned positive at $15.1 million, up from negative $7.3 million.
Costs held flat as revenue grew
Marcus & Millichap kept a lid on expenses even as business picked up: selling, general and administrative costs stayed roughly flat at $71.7 million despite the double-digit revenue growth, though cost of services ticked up 50 basis points to 62.4% of revenue. The company’s professional headcount stood at 1,677 as of June 30. The results are labeled preliminary because Marcus & Millichap had not yet filed its quarterly report with the SEC at the time of the release, meaning the figures remain subject to adjustment.
The rebound tracks a broader thaw in commercial real estate capital markets this year, with banks returning to CRE lending and the Federal Reserve’s most recent survey showing lenders easing loan standards after a prolonged tightening cycle. Marcus & Millichap specializes in mid-market investment sales β smaller, private-capital-driven deals that tend to be more sensitive to financing costs and buyer-seller price gaps than the large institutional transactions that dominate headlines, making its return to growth a signal about the health of the broader base of the commercial property market rather than just its largest deals.
What it means
The revenue and profitability figures are company-reported and preliminary, pending Marcus & Millichap’s formal 10-Q filing. The company’s own characterization of “more favorable catalysts” driving the rebound is management’s interpretation rather than an independently verified market assessment. Notably, Marcus & Millichap’s own forward-looking language tempers the good news: the company said “price discovery and wider than normal bid/ask spreads” remain a challenge it expects to persist through the rest of 2026, and it flagged interest rate volatility, recession risk, geopolitical uncertainty and tariff policy as ongoing risk factors.
What to watch: whether the improved deal volume holds up as the year progresses, given the company’s own acknowledgment that buyer-seller price gaps have not fully closed even as transaction activity accelerates.
