Why Are Real Estate Teams Going National?

Why Are Real Estate Teams Going National?

The FIG Team just dropped into LA – growing to six markets, three states and approximately 80 agents. Its first West Coast expansion shows why multi-market growth still depends on someone local.

The FIG Team just sparked the latest expansion story rocking the eXp Realty ecosystem. Already dominating Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Dallas, and Florida’s Space Coast, they have officially landed in Los Angeles.

This marks six markets, three states, and a massive footprint supported by roughly 80 agents – with more already on the horizon. In 2025 alone, the team closed 561 transactions totaling about $153 million in volume. 

Multi-market expansion is sweeping the industry, but setting up shop thousands of miles away without losing local street cred takes serious strategy.

For FIG Team founder Veronica Figueroa, the secret weapon was already living in LA.

The West Coast Expansion Started With a Text

Evelyne Ouellet knows a thing or two about starting over. The Montreal native moved to Los Angeles in 2011 with her husband and daughter, navigating the cross-border transition long before guiding clients through theirs.

Her real estate career has included nearly every version of the agent experience. She spent her first three years on a team, became an independent agent, created the Homes & Lifestyle brand, and established herself as the “French-Canadian California Broker.” She also became an eXp Certified Mentor and began helping other agents develop their businesses.

In 2025, Evelyne represented $3.5 million in volume. Her boutique brand hit high marks in LA’s coastal pockets, but she hit the wall every solo agent eventually faces: the limits of individual capacity. 

Enter Veronica Figueroa. Evelyne first spotted the live-wire leader interviewing Venus Williams on the eXpcon stage. Five years after they met, during an April Zoom call, Veronica dropped a line that stuck with Ouellet:

"You are only one partnership away from changing your business."

The same day, Ouellet made a bold move. She texted Figueroa to ask if the FIG Team had considered expanding into Los Angeles. Figueroa immediately connected her with the COO, Isis Sarcos, sparking the launch of FIG Team Los Angeles Homes & Lifestyle, with Evelyne at the forefront as Market Leader.

The partnership had five years of history behind it. Evelyne and Veronica had stayed connected as their businesses evolved, while Evelyne and Isis had watched each other grow within the industry. By the time the Los Angeles opportunity surfaced, the three already knew how one another worked and believed their approaches to serving clients, mentoring agents and building teams were a strong fit.

The Solo-Agent Ceiling Is Real

When Evelyne left her original team, it wasn’t because she didn’t believe in the team model. She wanted the freedom to find out what she could build herself. Her background in media and entertainment, including television, gave her a clear idea of how she wanted to market homes and present herself to clients. Becoming independent allowed her to build a brand the way she wanted to.

But even though independence offers total freedom, it also means flying entirely solo. Marketing, lead generation, admin tasks, contract negotiations, and client calls all land on one desk.

Serving existing clients could consume the same hours she needed to spend building the next month’s pipeline. The experience helped her sharpen her brand, but it also showed her what she would have to recreate if she wanted to recruit agents and grow a larger organization.

“Being a solo agent taught me that growth eventually reaches a ceiling,” she says.

She would need technology, coaching, recruiting infrastructure, lead-generation systems and operational support. She could spend years assembling those pieces independently, or she could lead a local division of a team that had already built them.

“The reality is, I wouldn’t have pursued this level of growth on my own” Evelyne confesses.

What Stays National vs. What Stays Local

The Los Angeles operation divides the work between an established team infrastructure and a leader who understands the market firsthand.

The FIG Team provides technology, operations, productivity coaching, recruiting support, and systems that have already been used across its other markets. Evelyne leads local recruiting, agent development, market strategy, and the Homes & Lifestyle community presence in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is both a luxury market and an international one. Its coastal neighborhoods attract clients from entertainment, technology, entrepreneurship and professional sports, while more than one in three residents was born outside the United States. Evelyne and Veronica plan to build FIG Team LA as a multicultural team that reflects the people living and investing in the market.

That local strategy will include connections to eXp Luxury and the Women Impact Network (WIN), supported by the operations and production systems Isis oversees across the larger FIG Team.

The teamwide systems are designed to remove the need to rebuild the back end of the business in every city. The client experience, local marketing, and agent relationships remain in the hands of the Market Leader.

This is also why the FIG Team did not enter Los Angeles by recruiting agents individually from Florida. Isis says the team evaluates both the opportunity within a market and the person prepared to take responsibility for it. In Evelyne, the team saw an eXp mentor with local relationships, a defined brand, media experience and a history of guiding other agents.

Los Angeles also offered the kind of market the team wanted to enter. Sarcos pointed to continued interest from homeowners and investors, along with local agents looking for coaching, operational help and a more structured way to grow.

The First 90 Days Are Mostly Infrastructure

Launching a distant division sounds glamorous, but the early months are all about the back end.

The FIG Team begins by identifying and interviewing agents who fit the local operation. It then establishes its onboarding process, CRM, internal communication, transaction coordination, accountability meetings, and reporting structure.

At the same time, the new division needs a recognizable local presence. That includes market-specific branding, social media, digital campaigns, recruiting efforts, and involvement within the area it plans to serve.

Each state also introduces a new set of contracts, disclosure rules, licensing requirements, and business practices. A process that works smoothly in Florida cannot simply be copied into California without adjustment.

“What works in one city doesn’t always translate directly into another,” Veronica says.

The operational systems may be repeatable. Their implementation has to account for the laws, customs and consumer expectations of each market.

The Biggest Expansion Mistake Happens Before Launch

The appeal of a new market can make expansion feel like the obvious next move. Isis says that one of the FIG Team’s hardest decisions has been determining when the organization is actually ready to say yes.

Before expanding, the team examines whether it has enough leadership capacity, operational support and resources to provide agents and clients with a consistent experience. Entering too early can leave the new division without the people or infrastructure required to support it.

The other major risk is entering a market without a leader who takes personal responsibility for its performance.

“A common mistake is choosing a market without having someone local who truly owns that market,” says Isis.

A team can provide a CRM, training schedule and recognizable name from another state. It cannot manufacture the local relationships or day-to-day judgment required to build trust in a new city. Without a credible person on the ground, a distant expansion can become little more than a name on a map.

Why Multiple Markets Are Becoming More Attractive

For teams with the right infrastructure, operating in several regions creates several practical advantages.

Agents can exchange referrals when clients relocate. A team can recruit people who want established support without requiring them to move to its original city. Operating in multiple regional economies can also reduce the organization’s dependence on the conditions of a single housing market.

Technology has made logistics easier than they were even five years ago. Training, meetings, recruiting and operational oversight can now take place across state lines without building a full corporate office in each location.

That does not make multi-market growth the right move for every team. The FIG Team’s experience points to a basic threshold: the systems must already work, the organization must have enough capacity to support another region, and the local leader must be able to make the model work in that specific market.

Without those pieces, expansion magnifies the problems a team already has. With them, a team can enter a new region without asking one person to build every part of the business alone.

So, Is This the New Growth Model?

The rise of multi-market teams suggests that the definition of a local real estate business is changing. A team can now centralize much of its technology, coaching, and operations while building locally led divisions in several states.

FIG Team Los Angeles Homes & Lifestyle will offer a real-world test of that model. The team plans to measure the first year through agent growth and retention, closed transactions, sales volume, profitability, and the strength of its local pipeline. It will also evaluate whether Los Angeles agents receive the same level of support as agents in its established markets.

The numbers will eventually show whether the West Coast expansion worked. The strategy behind it already explains why more teams are looking beyond their home markets: an established organization can travel farther when its systems are repeatable, and a local leader does not have to build everything from the ground up.