Above, Jason Mitchell
Forget the traditional real estate agent model. The Jason Mitchell Group has built a different kind of brokerage with strategic referral partnerships at its center. In the process, JMG is scaling its growth, redefining the agent-client relationship and showing why its model is the real estate brokerage of the future.
The real estate industry is notorious for its old-school siloed approach. Agents, lenders and other service providers typically operate in their own sandboxes, which creates friction for everyone and a disjointed client experience.
But the Jason Mitchell Group, or JMG for short, is shattering that status quo. And in the process, the top-ranking real estate brokerage is providing competitors with a master class on how strategic B2B partnerships can be a much-needed boon for business.
At the helm of the operation is Jason Mitchell, the visionary founder and CEO of the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company that bears his name.
From its humble beginnings nearly 20 years ago, JMG has now expanded into an enviable real estate empire spanning 40 states and more than 150 cities—and counting. And with more than 850 agents to serve, Mitchell says he has no plans of slowing down.
So to what does Mitchell credit his business’s meteoric rise to the top? The answer is simple: It’s the innovative, collaborative partnership model that empowers his agents to grow their businesses and close more deals.
From frustration to action: How a revolutionary model was born
Early in his real estate career, Mitchell, a Detroit native, saw firsthand the inefficiencies baked into the traditional real estate model. A model that tends to focus more on everyone swimming in their own lanes to get to the closing table rather than collaborating to move toward a shared goal.
Mitchell worked his way up through the industry, starting at Pulte Homes in Detroit as an intern in 2002, then later transferring to Pulte in Phoenix. He left Pulte and entered the residential real estate business in 2006, then worked in finance for a few years. Real estate beckoned again in 2010, and Mitchell founded and built up his real estate team, earning a strong reputation for customer service and getting deals done.
In 2011, a light bulb seemed to go off, stemming from the idea of business-to-business referrals.
“It started with a phone call from a friend of mine, Matt Stofer, who was an executive at Quicken Loans,” explains Mitchell. “He said, we have a new model and I would like you to meet Sam Vida, the founder of the company. The model was referring clients to trusted agents to work with Quicken Loans consumers and provide them with a world-class real estate experience. I started to get some referrals, then more, then more. I thought, man, this is the future, and I bet the house on it.”
Several years later, as Mitchell started to put better systems in place to service not just consumers but partners, he gave the ultimate ask: Will you back me in other markets?
After years of witnessing the brokenness of the traditional real estate model—clients juggling multiple contacts, communication breakdowns and unnecessary delays—Mitchell says the gaps in customer service and experience became painfully more evident over time.
He knew there had to be a better way, and he was determined to do something about it.
“I had my team at a local brokerage at the time, and it was great. We were doing a lot of business, but I realized I needed to own the whole thing, and my partners wanted me to own the whole thing,” Mitchell recalls of the relationship agreements his national partners had with the brokerage at the time.
So in 2019, Mitchell and his team left My Home Group and launched JMG as an independent real estate brokerage.
“I thought to myself, if I could expand into other market centers and provide the highest level of service to our partners and their clients, we may have the best model nationwide,” Mitchell explains. “I went market by market, interviewed people, hired agents and went grassroots to grow this thing.”
While continuing to expand the real estate team in Phoenix, Mitchell became the No. 1 real estate broker in the state in 2015, 2016 and 2017, and broke the Arizona sales record in 2018 with over $160M in personal production.
“I loved my time in the field, but as our model started to grow across the country, I knew I had something special, which was the only national brokerage where 90% of its business comes from partners. It was then I decided to focus solely on the business and retire my time from the field.”
The bet seemingly paid off. JMG production in 2018 was $320M, with 2024 projections anticipating over $5B in sales, which would make JMG the No. 1 real estate team in the USA.
“We have the best partners in the world,” says Mitchell. “I honestly owe any credit to these partners—Veterans United, Rocket, New American Funding, AmeriSave, Zillow, HomeStory, Mr. Cooper, Freedom Mortgage—the list goes on and on. That is where it all begins.”
The national accolades have piled up, too. JMG has not only become the No. 1 B2B broker in the country, it has earned a spot on the INC 5000 for four consecutive years.
Related: Hear Jason Mitchell discuss winning strategies during the session, “The 2025 Playbook: Winning Strategies for the Coming Year,” taking place at RISMedia’s 36th Annual CEO & Leadership Exchange in Washington, D.C., Sept. 4 – 6. Learn more and register here.
Service that keeps them coming back for more
The collective, high-level partnerships driving JMG’s referral model have been integral to the firm’s success. What keeps them coming back? It comes down to the service agents provide as referral partners’ “boots on the ground,” Mitchell says.
“If you provide a high service level, you’ll always be taken care of. It’s that peace of mind at JMG to know that
I just have to follow the rules and everything is gravy,” he adds.
In 2024 alone, JMG expects to distribute $50 billion in referrals, which equates to more than 100,000 referrals to its agents nationwide.
“That means our average agent gets over 100 high-quality referrals every year, and our average referral agent closes an extra 28 transactions a year because they’re very good quality (leads),” says Mitchell. “So we’re able to really help our agents grow their business by giving them these great opportunities.”
The partnerships didn’t come about by chance, though. Mitchell and his leadership team have thoughtfully and carefully forged these collaborations to help eliminate transactional hiccups and create a unified client experience.
Giving agents reasons to believe: ‘We’re all winning together’
JMG offers a compelling value proposition for top-performing real estate agents that’s best summed up by four key pillars:
- High-quality referrals: Taking the burden of finding client leads off agents’ shoulders, allowing them to focus on closing deals and serving their clients.
- Technological innovation: Streamlined tools that empower agents to work smarter, not harder, such as a referral dashboard, social media, marketing and networking, which are all accessible on JMG’s proprietary app.
- Profitable partnerships: A strong revenue-sharing model that incentivizes both self-generated leads with an 80/20 commission split and referral leads from JMG partners at a lower but still competitive split. Plus, existing agents who recruit new agents can earn 5% of each deal those new team members close through the JMG Plus revenue-sharing program.
- Supportive culture: A stable environment that fosters loyalty and attracts (and retains) top real estate talent through transparent communication, extensive training, marketing and other business support.
Just ask Mike Parkinson, who joined JMG in 2019 from a discount brokerage. Parkinson, based in Layton, Utah, says it’s one of the most impressive platforms he’s ever seen.
“The first year I came on board with them, I think I did 30 deals, and the consecutive years since, I’ve probably been averaging over 50 deals a year,” Parkinson tells RISMedia.
Parkinson, who is now a division president overseeing market centers and agent recruitment in Utah and Idaho, attributes a lot of JMG’s success to Mitchell’s leadership and work ethic.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who has a better work ethic,” Parkinson says of Mitchell. “He’s more of a practitioner. Everything he does (in the business) is about how it equates to a better situation for the agents. He’s just got big goals, big visions. He’s a big thinker. I try to keep up with that.”
Mitchell boils down his team’s value proposition simply: ”If you are an agent who has drive and motivation, and you are willing to accept accountability, JMG has the opportunity for you to grow.” Mitchell says. “Everything is universally the same at JMG. So it creates this unique culture of we’re all winning together; there’s plenty to go around because we’re a virtual company.”
The more client referrals JMG shares with its agents, the more their self-generated business leads grow due to referral clients sending their friends and family to JMG agents, Mitchell notes.
“We’re not greedy with self-gen; we have a very high self-gen split,” he says. “My thought is if you give them a really good self-gen split and a bunch of high-quality referrals, they’ll never leave. That’s why our attrition rate is only 6%; nationally, it’s close to 30%.”
A deeper dive into the JMG model
The old way of doing real estate meant a consumer had to go through an agent to be set up on a home search on the MLS. Then the homebuyer had to find their own lender or ask for referrals from their agent or family and friends.
However, technology has changed the game. Home search portals like Zillow and Realtor.com® now have their own lending divisions, or partner with major lenders, making it increasingly harder for independent real estate agents to get to consumers first.
Mitchell, pictured outside his home in Paradise Valley, Arizona
That’s why JMG scores all of its agents on how they close, their communication and customer satisfaction. This enables JMG to know who the best agents are to serve up for future referral opportunities in every single market they do business in, Mitchell says.
“We built all this, and we are a pioneer brokerage,” he says with a note of pride. “We’re a true brokerage that actually is like a glorified relo company, but we own the boots on the ground, so all of our agents are under our flag, our umbrella.”
This, in turn, allows JMG to set strict accountability standards for how its agents perform, starting with the extensive training each JMG agent undergoes after they come aboard. After a more general training on the brokerage’s systems, departments and divisions, agents go through network certification training to learn how to service partner leads.
“These are more partner-level trainings, learning about the partnerships, how to update each partner, what the mechanism of communication is from our mission control department who manages the accounts for us, to what our call center does,” Mitchell says. “Our call center is following up with every single lead that gets sent to us.
“That’s 400 to 500 leads a day they’re following up with religiously for our agents to help them close more deals and to be more in front of our new consumers,” he adds.
In addition to this initial partner training, JMG offers agents monthly continuing education, too, as well as mentorship and coaching opportunities.
JMG also offers a generous revenue-sharing program, JMG Plus, which rewards agents who recruit new agents into the company when those agents close deals. Referring agents can earn 5% in revenue for each transaction the new team member closes after they join JMG, which averages out to about $600 or so, Mitchell says.
“That’s the biggest way we recruit,” he notes.
However, JMG doesn’t hire every agent it interviews, and the criteria to join the top-producing team is rigorous by design. JMG requires that agents have a certain level of experience and have closed a specific number of transactions to join the firm, Mitchell says.
Expanding its reach by attracting new leaders
JMG has already achieved impressive results and scaled the business, but it has its sights set on more growth.
To do that, they need to recruit leaders to head up new market centers as division presidents in areas where the firm does not yet have a footprint, Mitchell says.
Ideally, these professionals are independent brokerages or established team leaders with a dozen or so agents in markets JMG doesn’t already have a presence in, such as Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Buffalo, Pittsburgh or Baltimore.
“We don’t want somebody managing 50 people, because I don’t have enough referrals for 50 people,” Mitchell says. “For us to be successful (in our partner model), we don’t need a lot of agents. Maybe you manage 10, 12 or 15 agents by market. You get a P&L bonus and an override on all that production. We can also provide you with referrals to produce in the field as well.”
Referral partners benefit, too, because of JMG’s wide-ranging network of agents across the country, Mitchell notes. That’s why it’s critical for agents to outperform in each market center it enters so JMG can earn even more leads from its partners, he adds.
“When you partner with JMG, you have national coverage in 40 states. With one phone call, we can talk to 850 agents on your behalf, so you don’t have to manage it; we want to manage it for you (the partner). So it’s the ease of the account that makes JMG a great partner as well.”
Looking ahead to the future with a renewed purpose
The real estate market continues to grapple with headwinds such as slower demand, low housing inventory and stubbornly high interest rates. With these challenges and client acquisition struggles in play, it’s getting more difficult for agents to get new business, Mitchell points out.
“If commissions get compressed, which we think they will, that just means you’ve got to close more business,” he explains. “But it’s going to be harder to get to the consumer because of lending channels and (home) search channels. So you can’t buy leads, and open houses are slow, and if you’re only relying on your sphere, you’re not going to do as many transactions.”
That’s why JMG’s referral partnership model holds a distinct competitive advantage for agents who want to level up in their business.
Change is scary, though, and agents who could earn and close more business by making a move may be reluctant to do so, says Parkinson. This is especially true if they’re taking a smaller cut on referral leads. However, Parkinson says agents need to reframe their thinking to move past that mental blocker.
“The key is seeing how this type of culture can bring currency to your already existing business as opposed to taking away from it,” Parkinson says.
The undeniable value his pioneering real estate model has afforded to agents, partners and clients alike is a dream come true for Mitchell. It’s a dream he’s worked long and hard to bring to fruition—not just for himself and his agents, but also for his family.
Mitchell, married with two stepsons, Asher, 12, and Brecken, 8, and his daughter, Ruby, 2, grew up in South Detroit. He firmly believes that his humble beginnings and the drive he witnessed among Detroit’s blue collar population helped mold his determination and work ethic.
It’s no surprise that most of his family works for JMG. His father is a broker in Michigan, his brother works in the call center, his sister works in contracts while her fiance is in recruiting and his wife handles marketing.
With family and business so closely intertwined, Mitchell takes his responsibility seriously “to work my butt off every day so my family can have things that I didn’t have growing up,” he says.
“I don’t have a golden parachute,” Mitchell says frankly. “If this fails and flops…that’s always the motivational factor for me; there’s a lot of people who rely on me, not just internally here at JMG, but the people that I love the most.”
Above all, Mitchell is infinitely grateful. Grateful for his family. For his leaders and employees. For JMG’s agents and its clients.
His gratitude and appreciation run especially deep for the trusting referral partners. These hard-won relationships helped this unconventional business idea he hatched nearly 15 years ago flourish into a transformative brokerage model that could create sea change within the real estate landscape—for the better.
For more information, please visit https://thejasonmitchellgroup.com/.
