A leading Keller Williams Realty team based in Austin is forming its own brokerage, aiming to claim ground ceded by a merging industry.
Broker Kasey Jorgenson left Keller Williams to found Jorgenson Real Estate, ending a 16-year career at Austin-based Keller Williams, the largest franchise in the industry by agent count, according to a press release.
The Austin Business Journal ranked the Jorgenson Group second in the city from 2019 to 2023. The group totaled $75 million in sales over about 190 transactions in 2025, according to the release.
As the brokerage industry coagulates, Jorgenson expects industry titans to gradually leave physical offices, presenting an opportunity for independent teams.
“I don’t see how these huge companies that have brick-and-mortar and local support staff — I don’t see how they can afford to give the agents the value that they should be getting now. Not many Keller Williams market centers are hugely profitable,” Jorgenson said.
Jorgenson Real Estate emerges amid a difficult market for the Austin area. Austin has lost more home value than any other major metropolitan area since its last market peak in 2022, with the median home price dropping to about $490,000 in 2025 from over $575,000 in 2022, according to Zillow. The decline reflects the wane of Austin’s dalliance with the tech industry.
While the Austin market may appear nominally balanced, it has a vast, unrepresented share of homeowners who want to sell, but have failed, Jorgenson said.
“At multiple points last year, about half of the properties that were active on the market were vacant. And that wasn’t counting new construction,” Jorgenson said. “We consider them as people that, quote-unquote, have to sell.”
Additionally, while Austin’s home inventory only occasionally lapped above six months supply last year — the traditional threshold of a buyer’s market — it had been operating below four months supply since the end of the Great Recession.
A significant number of sellers have decided to rent out their homes instead, resulting in a “huge behind-the-scenes” inventory of homes that will return to the market in 2026, Jorgenson believes.
“We opened up a property management side because we were tired of sending those people elsewhere. [Renters] saturated the condo market, especially,” Jorgensen said.
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