This is the modeled range of pre-tax manager-run owner earnings for one mature Weichert Initial or Additional Office across three independent scenarios. The base scenario is about $86,000. An owner who performs the general-manager role may receive an estimated owner-operator benefit of $93,000 to $302,000, but that larger amount includes compensation for the owner’s labor and is not passive business profit.
Independent estimate, not an Item 19 claim. Weichert Real Estate Affiliates, Inc. makes no financial performance representation in Item 19. The figures here combine identified 2026 FDD facts with a broad IRS industry benchmark, a BLS manager-wage proxy, and clearly labeled editorial revenue assumptions. Actual results can differ materially with market volume, commission splits, agent count, location, occupancy, labor, financing, owner involvement, referral mix, and execution.
Legal franchisor: Weichert Real Estate Affiliates, Inc. Issuance date: March 12, 2026. Item 19 status: no sales, profit, or owner-compensation representation. Applicable population: a single mature Initial or Additional Office; secondary Administrative, Temporary, and Satellite Offices are not modeled. External benchmarks: IRS Tax Year 2023 nonfarm sole proprietorship statistics and BLS May 2023 General and Operations Managers wages. Date checked: July 15, 2026.
The current official Weichert franchise website identifies Weichert Real Estate Affiliates, Inc. and states that each franchised office is independently owned and operated. The official U.S. franchise information page also cautions that no financial performance representation is being made.
Evidence confidence: LIMITED. The current FDD supplies the operating structure and recurring fee formulas but no unit sales or earnings data; the largest modeling uncertainty is annual Gross Revenues for a comparable Weichert Office.
No past or future financial performance is represented.
IRS 2023 net income less deficit divided by business receipts for a wider real-estate category.
Applied to Gross Revenues, subject to the applicable monthly minimum.
Twelve times the disclosed $1,506.91 monthly maximum per Office.
BLS May 2023 national median wage for General and Operations Managers.
Item 20 count for Initial and Additional Offices, down from 297 at 2024 year-end.
What does Weichert’s 2026 Item 19 actually report?
Officially, it reports no financial performance representation. Item 19 says the franchisor does not represent past performance of franchised or company-owned outlets and does not project future performance. Therefore, Gross Sales, Gross Revenues, Operating Profit, EBITDA, Net Income, owner salary, and distributions cannot be stated as Weichert results.
The absence of an Item 19 number is not evidence that earnings are high or low. It means a buyer cannot establish an official average, median, quartile, loss rate, or percentage achieving a threshold from the FDD. The Federal Trade Commission’s franchise guide explains why gross sales and earnings claims require careful expense and population analysis.
What population can be identified from Item 20?
Item 20 identifies 263 franchised Initial and Additional Offices at December 31, 2025. That is an official outlet count, not a reporting sample for earnings. The franchised-office total declined from 305 at the end of 2023 to 297 at the end of 2024 and 263 at the end of 2025. Company-owned offices, operated by Weichert Co. and affiliates, declined from 85 to 77 to 75 over the same year-end dates.
Item 20 does not convert into an earnings sample. It tracks outlet status and includes only Initial and Additional Offices. It does not state how many offices were profitable, owner-operated, manager-run, mature, converted, newly opened, or comparable in revenue.
How was the annual owner-earnings range estimated?
The estimate applies three explicit revenue assumptions to an owner-led industry margin, then deducts disclosed recurring Weichert fees. It is an analytical model for one mature Office, not a claim about typical performance. All calculations use full-precision inputs and are displayed to the nearest $1,000.
- Gross Revenues: $400,000, $700,000, and $1,000,000. These are editorial sensitivity inputs, not Weichert-reported sales and not probabilities.
- Owner-led margin before Weichert fees: 32%, 35%, and 38%. The center is the 34.96% IRS 2023 “net income less deficit” margin for offices of real estate agents, brokers, property managers, and appraisers; the lower and upper cases are a three-percentage-point sensitivity band.
- Royalty: 6% of Gross Revenues. Each modeled revenue level exceeds the mature $18,000 annualized minimum royalty.
- Marketing Fee: 2% of Gross Revenues, subject to the 2026 per-Office annual minimum of $6,484.20 and annual maximum of $18,082.92.
- Local Brokers Council dues: $3,000, $1,650, and $300 across Conservative, Base, and Upside scenarios. Special assessments are excluded because their timing and amount are unknown.
- Manager-run case: subtracts the $101,280 BLS median annual wage. Employer payroll taxes, benefits, recruiting costs, and market-specific premiums are not added, so actual manager cost may be higher.
| Scenario | Assumed Gross Revenues | Owner-operator benefit | Manager-run owner earnings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | $400,000 | $93,000 | −$8,000 |
| Base | $700,000 | $187,000 | $86,000 |
| Upside | $1,000,000 | $302,000 | $200,000 |
Formula: owner-operator benefit = assumed Gross Revenues × scenario owner-led margin − Continuing Royalty − Marketing Fee − Local Brokers Council dues. Manager-run owner earnings = owner-operator benefit − $101,280 manager wage proxy. Financing principal and personal income taxes are excluded. Interest, depreciation, capital expenditures, and owner compensation cannot be isolated cleanly from the broad IRS benchmark.
The gap between each pair is the $101,280 manager-wage proxy. Owner-operator benefit includes labor value; manager-run owner earnings represent the residual after that wage proxy.
Interpretation: management structure can move more than $100,000 of annual economic value between paid labor expense and owner labor compensation in this model. Sources: 2026 FDD Items 6 and 15; IRS nonfarm sole proprietorship statistics; BLS May 2023 General and Operations Managers wages. Values are independent scenarios.
Can a Weichert owner treat the office as passive income?
No passive-ownership assumption is supported by the 2026 FDD. Item 15 requires the franchisee to personally supervise the Franchised Business and devote the necessary time and best efforts unless the franchisor gives written permission. A Responsible Broker must personally and directly supervise operations and ordinarily also serves as Business Manager.
For a single Office, the same person may be the Responsible Broker, Business Manager, and Office Manager. An owner who fills those functions can avoid a market manager wage, but the avoided cost is compensation for skilled, licensed work. It should be labeled owner-operator benefit, not pure profit or passive cash flow.
- Gross Revenues
- The FDD-defined revenue base for royalty and marketing calculations. It is revenue, not owner earnings.
- Owner-operator benefit
- Modeled owner-led net income after recurring Weichert fees, including the economic value of management labor performed by the owner.
- Manager-run owner earnings
- Owner-operator benefit minus the BLS median general-manager wage proxy. It is before personal taxes and financing principal.
- After-tax take-home pay
- Not estimated. It depends on entity form, federal and state taxes, deductions, owner compensation policy, and personal circumstances.
The $101,280 difference is labor value, not free profit. The BLS benchmark excludes self-employed workers and does not include employer payroll taxes or benefits. A locally experienced licensed broker-manager may cost materially more or less.
How much do recurring Weichert fees remove from the model?
Modeled recurring franchise charges range from about $35,000 to $78,000 per year. That includes the 6% Continuing Royalty, the 2% Marketing Fee subject to its 2026 cap, and annual Local Brokers Council dues. It excludes optional technology add-ons, transaction-specific referral charges, insurance, special assessments, occupancy, agent commissions, payroll, and ordinary brokerage operating expenses.
The marketing maximum reduces the effective percentage at $1 million of modeled Gross Revenues, while the 6% royalty continues to scale with revenue.
Interpretation: the modeled percentage falls modestly at higher revenue because the 2026 Marketing Fee is capped at $1,506.91 per month per Office. Source: 2026 FDD, Item 6, pp. 12–21. Annual amounts are derived from the disclosed formulas and rounded for display.
Which recurring charges are not fully captured?
Referral economics and local assessments remain material unknowns. Item 6 states that certain affiliated referral programs can charge 37.5% to 45% of Gross Revenues from the referred transaction. Those fees are transaction-specific and participation or lead flow can vary, so they are not applied to all modeled revenue. Local Brokers Councils also may impose special assessments up to $500 per Office per month unless increased under council rules.
Required base versions of BrokerSumo and myWeichert are described as available without charge, but optional features, excess usage, training, conventions, insurance, and other operating obligations can create additional expense. The model also does not treat the Item 7 initial investment of $77,300 to $359,800 as an annual expense.
What can move actual owner earnings outside this range?
Gross Revenues and the office’s retained economics after agent splits are the dominant variables. The FDD does not disclose either. A brokerage office can generate substantial transaction volume while retaining a much smaller amount after sales-associate commissions, referral fees, desk or team arrangements, payroll, occupancy, insurance, lead generation, and support costs.
The IRS benchmark is the best official margin input used here, but it is not a Weichert-office margin. Its category covers offices of real estate agents, brokers, property managers, and appraisers, and the Tax Year 2023 table aggregates 1,046,471 sole-proprietor returns. Business receipts were about $66.26 billion and net income less deficit was about $23.17 billion, producing the 34.96% ratio. Many returns represent individuals rather than staffed brokerage offices, which limits comparability at the $400,000 to $1,000,000 revenue assumptions. The underlying IRS Tax Year 2023 Table 1 spreadsheet provides the source figures.
- Revenue definition: confirm whether the office’s historical reports use the same Gross Revenues definition as Item 6.
- Agent compensation: obtain actual commission-split, cap, desk-fee, team, and independent-contractor economics.
- Owner role: determine who will serve as Responsible Broker, Business Manager, and Office Manager and whether written permission is needed for a manager-run structure.
- Occupancy and staffing: test local rent, support payroll, payroll burden, insurance, and required office standards rather than using national averages.
- Referral mix: quantify what share of closings comes through Weichert-affiliated programs and the applicable 37.5% to 45% transaction referral charge.
- Debt: model interest and principal separately for the actual financed amount, rate, amortization period, and working-capital facility.
A $1 million Gross Revenues scenario does not imply a $1 million owner income. In the Upside scenario, $78,383 goes to modeled recurring franchise charges before considering agent compensation, office payroll, occupancy, insurance, technology choices, referral charges, debt, and taxes.
What should a buyer ask existing franchisees and the franchisor?
Ask for office-level records that separate Gross Revenues, operating profit, owner labor, and debt service. Item 20 provides current and former franchisee contacts, which is more useful for validation than treating a broad industry average as a same-brand result.
- Request written confirmation that the March 12, 2026 FDD and all state-effective amendments are the documents governing the offer.
- Ask whether any supplemental written Item 19 substantiation or existing-office records are available and exactly which outlets, periods, and definitions they cover.
- Interview owners of mature Initial and Additional Offices separately from new, converted, secondary, and multi-office operations.
- Collect at least three years of revenue, agent payouts, payroll, occupancy, referral fees, royalty, Marketing Fee, council charges, operating profit, owner compensation, and capital expenditures.
- Ask manager-run owners for the fully loaded cost of the Responsible Broker, Business Manager, and Office Manager functions, not salary alone.
- Reconcile interview figures to tax returns or financial statements and identify closed, transferred, or loss-making offices rather than sampling only successful operators.
What is the strongest defensible earnings takeaway?
Within the stated assumptions, a manager-run Weichert Office models from an approximately $8,000 annual loss to about $200,000 of pre-tax owner earnings, with a base case near $86,000. An active owner who replaces the modeled manager can show $93,000 to $302,000 of owner-operator benefit, but approximately $101,280 of that difference represents labor value rather than passive residual profit.
The range is scenario-based, not official. The most important earnings driver is Gross Revenues after local transaction volume and agent economics. The largest unresolved uncertainty is that Item 19 provides no same-brand revenue or margin distribution. Before making a decision, a buyer should verify Item 19 status and substantiation, obtain comparable office financial statements, and test the manager-run and owner-operated structures with current and former franchisees.