BRENTWOOD, TN - Harold E. Crye, co-founder and CEO of Crye-Leike Real Estate Services, has been named to the 2017 Swanepoel Power 200 (SP200) list, which lists the 200 most powerful leaders in the residential real estate industry. He was the only Tennessee-based real estate broker in the top 20.

Crye-Leike, a full service real estate company, is ranked the fifth largest independently-owned real estate firm in the nation.

The SP200 is produced and published annually by the Swanepoel T3 Group, a research and consulting firm.

“We invest over 600 hours of research, hold countless internal debates, perform a deep analysis of numbers and organizational charts, and sincerely reckon with what power actually means to produce the report each year,” the company says of its annual ranking.

Factors that are considered go well beyond the size and financial success of the companies they lead, with leaders being evaluated based on their personal influence, tenure, office, decision-making power, the financial resources at their disposal, their company or organization's industry significance and geographic reach, and public announcements about pending changes. The result is a list considered the definitive ranking of residential real estate’s top leaders.

“We aim to hold a mirror up to the industry, reflecting residential real estate back to itself by noting who wields the most power and influence, whether by position, personal power, employee count, reputation and trajectory,” said Swanepoel T3 Group CEO Stefan Swanepoel in announcing the 2017 list.

Crye, who co-founded Crye-Leike in 1997 in Memphis with partner and president, Dick Leike, said the listing is a reflection of the hard work and success of the more than 3,100 independent real estate agents affiliated with Crye-Leike and the more than 800 employees who support them.

“It is an honor to be recognized as a leader by a prestigious organization in the real estate industry because it shows we are making a difference in real estate every day,” Crye said.

“We didn’t set out to become the biggest real estate brokerage, just to grow by providing the best real estate sale services around, to our agents and their clients. We have become an industry leader by doing the right things the right way and never forgetting that Crye-Leike succeeds when its agents succeed. We have a good structure and a good system and we have a lot of good people.”

T3 Group is a research and consulting firm founded by real estate success story Stefan Swanepoel, whose career over four decades has included such roles as president and/or CEO of a real estate brokerage, a global real estate franchisor, a national REALTOR® association, a MLS organization, and a technology startup. For the last 19 years, he has served as a trusted confidential adviser to CEOs and other senior leaders in the real estate industry. He is the author of 33 books and reports.

​Tennessee-based Crye-Leike Real Estate Services (www.crye-leike.com), a full-service real estate company for 40 years, is ranked the fifth largest independently owned real estate firm in the nation, according to the 2017 REAL Trends 500 ranking, and is the largest real estate company in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and the Mid-South. Headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., Crye-Leike has a network of more than 3,100 sales associates and 126 company-owned and franchised offices.