Team members cap at $10,000 instead of $15,000, and pay $99 a month instead of $149. They also pay the team lead, and that payment is larger than both savings put together. On fees alone a team costs you more, which means the reason to join one is what it generates, never what it saves.
Joining a team and moving a team are opposite decisions with opposite arithmetic, and a page that blurred them would be useless to both. This one is in two halves.
How the split works, what it costs you, and the specific circumstance in which a team is clearly the right call. Starts immediately below.
What the move costs your members, what it costs you, and what Epique puts behind teams. Skip ahead to part two.
This part applies to both of you, so it comes first.
The team lead's split comes off the gross commission first. Epique then takes its 15 percent from both sides separately, the team lead's portion and yours, with each side counting against its own annual cap.
The order matters and it is the part agents most often get backwards, so here it is in sequence.
Two figures decide everything from here, and only one of them is published. Epique's minimum is 5 percent. What your specific team lead charges, on which kinds of business, is between you and them.
At minimum 5 percent, and commonly a great deal more on the business they hand you. A widespread structure is 5 percent on deals you source yourself and 50 percent on leads the team lead provides.
Sit with that second figure, because it is the one that decides whether a team works for you. Half the commission on a lead your team lead gives you.
That is not a criticism. It is a fair price for a lead that arrives ready, and teams that generate genuine lead flow earn it. But it means the cap difference everyone opens with, $15,000 against $10,000, is not remotely the number that decides this. It is a rounding error next to the split.
A $5,000 lower cap and a $50 a month cheaper technology fee. Both real, both immediate, both easy to say in one sentence.
Five percent on your own business, fifty percent on theirs. Larger by a wide margin, private to each team, and published nowhere.
"What percentage do you take on business I generate myself, what do you take on leads you provide, and how is a lead classified as yours rather than mine?"
That third clause is where disagreements live. A past client who calls you directly, a referral from your own database, an open house the team paid for: whether those count as yours or theirs is worth settling in writing on day one, not in month nine.
No. On self-generated business at the 5 percent minimum, a team member keeps less than an individual agent, because the team split is larger than the cap saving and the technology fee saving combined.
At $6 million in production, roughly $150,000 in gross commission, all of it self-generated, at the lowest split Epique permits a team lead to charge:
| What comes out | Individual agent | Traditional team member |
|---|---|---|
| Team lead split | none | $7,500 |
| Epique company split, capped | $15,000 | $10,000 |
| Technology fee | $1,788 | $1,188 |
| Total out | $16,788 | $18,688 |
| You keep | $133,212 | $131,312 |
The cap saving is $5,000 and the technology fee saving is $600. The team split is $7,500. The individual agent keeps $1,900 more.
It holds at lower production too. At $75,000 in gross commission the individual keeps $1,900 more, and at $50,000 they keep $1,525 more. The gap narrows but it does not reverse, because the team split scales with your production while the cap saving is fixed and then declines.
So the lower cap is not a discount. It is a partial rebate on a larger payment, and presenting the rebate without the payment is how agents end up surprised.
Built from published Epique figures and the 5 percent minimum. Your team lead's actual rate, your production and your mix of self-generated versus provided business will all differ. Run your own numbers and then add your team split on top, because the calculator does not know about it.
When the team supplies business you would not otherwise have closed. Fifty percent of a deal that would never have reached you is income you did not have. Fifty percent of a client you would have won anyway is expensive.
That distinction is the whole decision, and the arithmetic on the good side of it is not close.
Take an agent generating $75,000 of gross commission on their own. As an individual they keep about $61,962. Now put the same agent on a team where they keep generating that $75,000 themselves at a 5 percent split, and the team lead also hands them another $75,000 of business at 50 percent:
| Situation | Paid to team lead | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| Alone, $75,000 self-generated | none | $61,962 |
| On a team, same $75,000 plus $75,000 of provided leads | $41,250 | $97,562 |
The team member pays the team lead $41,250 and still finishes $35,600 ahead, because the leads were additive. Every previous section on this page is true and this one is also true, which is the honest shape of the decision.
So the question is never "is a team cheaper." It is: will this team hand me business I could not have generated myself, in enough volume to more than cover what I pay for it? If yes, join and stop reading. If no, the arithmetic three sections up applies and you will keep more alone.
The hard part is that this is a forecast about someone else's lead flow, made before you have seen it. Which is why the questions worth asking a team lead are about volume and consistency, not culture.
"How many leads did you hand each team member last month, how many closed, and can I speak to two members who joined more than a year ago?"
No. It shrinks by $1,000 every year and is worth exactly nothing from year six, because the individual cap declines to the same $10,000 floor while the traditional team cap does not move.
| Year | Individual cap | Traditional team cap | Team advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $15,000 | $10,000 | $5,000 |
| 2 | $14,000 | $10,000 | $4,000 |
| 3 | $13,000 | $10,000 | $3,000 |
| 4 | $12,000 | $10,000 | $2,000 |
| 5 | $11,000 | $10,000 | $1,000 |
| 6 and after | $10,000 | $10,000 | nothing |
An agent joining a traditional team for the cap is buying something that is at its most valuable on the day it is pitched and is worth zero five years later. Meanwhile the team split continues at full strength for as long as you are on the team.
Power Team is different on this specific point. A $5,000 cap stays $5,000 below the individual floor permanently, so that advantage does persist. It is also the structure with the most attached to it.
Not a structure you choose. It is an earned designation, and the team has to produce $40 million in sales volume or 140 transactions in an anniversary year to hold it. Members then cap at $5,000 rather than $10,000 and sit at the $250 transaction fee ceiling permanently.
That distinction matters, because Power Team is frequently described as an option on a menu. It is not. It is a performance tier a team qualifies for collectively, which means an individual agent cannot elect into it and a team lead cannot promise it to a recruit who has not yet helped earn it.
The terms are genuinely good once held. The $250 ceiling with no annual threshold to re-earn is worth more over a career than the cap difference and is rarely mentioned. Note that Power Team leaders still pay the $149 technology fee. Only members pay $99.
The lower cap is the advertised half. Here is the other half, from the agreement rather than from a summary of it.
Read those in the agreement rather than taking this list as complete, because a summary written by someone who benefits from your decision is worth exactly what you paid for it.
Power Team is not Power Award. Power Award is individual production recognition at 24 transactions or $10 million. Power Team is a collective team designation at $40 million or 140 transactions. The names get conflated constantly and the qualifications are completely different.
A team lead must complete one year of active agent status before forming a team, and may recruit no more than five existing Epique agents into it for the entire life of the team. Recruiting from outside Epique is unrestricted.
Every term in this section is in the independent contractor agreement, which Epique publishes at ica.epiquerealty.com. That document governs, not this page. It carries a revision date at the top and its terms can change, so check the date when you read it, and read the Teams sections in full before you sign a team agreement.
And the reverse, briefly, because it is just as real: an agent whose problem is lead flow, structure, accountability or inexperience is often far better off on a good team than alone, and the numbers in the section above show why. The mistake is not joining a team. The mistake is joining one for the cap.
Less than you would expect for you, and more than you would expect for them. Your economics improve the week you land. Each of your members absorbs a transition cost that you do not, and they do not get a vote on whether it is worth paying.
Epique does soften the largest part of it, and that matters, so here is the whole picture rather than the alarming half.
| For each member | What happens on transfer | The cost |
|---|---|---|
| Annual cap already paid elsewhere | Epique offers cap credit and cap deferment | Largely absorbed, but see the trade below |
| Transaction fee threshold | Resets to zero on joining | Back to $500 per side until they have paid $5,000 again |
| Declining cap tenure | Starts again at Epique | Back to the year-one cap rather than a floor they had reached |
Cap credit and cap deferment remove most of the sting from a mid-year move. Taking either one means the agent cannot earn Power Award until their cap reset date. Note that neither appears in the published independent contractor agreement, so they operate as company practice rather than a contractual term. Get the specific terms confirmed in writing for each member before you rely on them.
That is not a technicality. Power Award drops the technology fee from $149 to $99, doubles first line revenue share to 20 percent, and carries an equity award scaled to the agent's cap. It is invitation based rather than automatic and must be re-earned each cap anniversary year. An agent who would have qualified this year gives that up for the remainder of the cap year in exchange for not paying a second cap.
For most transferring agents that trade is worth taking. For a high producer who would have cleared 24 transactions or $10 million anyway, it may not be. It is a real decision with a real cost on both sides, and it belongs in front of each member individually rather than being handled for them.
"Here is what your cap looks like if you take the credit, here is what you give up by taking it, and here is what happens if you do not. Which do you want?"
Meanwhile your own position improves immediately and without a comparable cost. Your cap is the standard $15,000 declining to $10,000, and because your side is fed by a share of every member's transactions as well as your own, you reach it earlier in the year than a solo agent on the same personal production would. Past it, the company split stops.
None of that is hidden and none of it is unfair. It is simply worth saying plainly that the person deciding carries the least transition cost, and the people carrying the most have no vote. A team lead who has read this far and still wants to move should be able to explain the trade to every member without flinching.
A dedicated teams division handling onboarding, support and training, plus an annual leadership retreat with rooms covered by the company.
The teams division is the part that matters operationally. Moving a team is an administrative event more than a financial one: licenses, MLS records, board memberships, rebranded marketing, listings in flight, and eight people asking you the same question in the same week. Having a function whose job is that, rather than doing it yourself alongside your own production, is the difference between a two-week move and a two-month one.
The leadership retreat is held annually in Orlando. The company covers rooms at Margaritaville, runs a day of training, and takes attendees to Disney, including a spouse and two children.
That is a genuinely good perk and it is worth describing accurately rather than vaguely. It is also not a reason to move a team, and if it is doing real work in your decision then the numbers in part one are not working hard enough. Confirm what qualifies you for it before counting on it, since it is a leadership event rather than an every-agent benefit.
Onboarding support, training, and a division that has moved teams before. This is the operational reason team moves succeed or stall, and it is much less exciting than the retreat and much more important.
The retreat. Real, paid for, and pleasant. It should sit near the bottom of your reasoning, in the same tier as the items on the benefits page that we tell you not to move for.
In this order, because the later ones stop mattering if the earlier ones fail.
If those five come back clean, the arithmetic in part one is on your side and the operational support is real. If two or more come back badly, the right answer is to wait, and waiting costs you nothing except a year of a cap that was going to decline anyway.
I benefit if you affiliate with Epique. I am a Colorado Broker Associate affiliated with Epique Realty and I participate in the revenue share program, which means I earn a share of company revenue on transactions closed by agents I introduce. This page is published by Jing Marketing LLC, which I operate. It is not an Epique corporate page and Epique did not review it.
Now the conflict pointing the other way, which you should know about. Revenue share is calculated from company dollar, and company dollar is capped. So the most an individual agent can generate for whoever attracted them is $1,500 a year, while a Power Team member who caps at $5,000 tops out at $500. Anyone advising you on team structure, including me, earns up to three times more if you stay an individual.
That is a real financial reason for a recruiter to steer you away from the structure that might suit you best. Knowing it exists is the only protection against it, which is why it is on the page rather than in my head. Get the team agreement, get the lead numbers, and decide on those.
The team lead's split comes off gross commission first. Epique then takes its 15 percent from both sides separately, the team lead's and yours, each against its own annual cap. Epique sets a 5 percent minimum on what a team lead may charge, and the actual rate is set by the team.
No. The cap is $10,000 rather than $15,000 and the technology fee is $99 rather than $149, but the team split is larger than both savings combined. On self-generated business at the 5 percent minimum, an individual agent producing $150,000 in gross commission keeps about $1,900 more than a team member.
Commonly 50 percent, against a 5 percent minimum on business you generate yourself. It varies by team and it is not published anywhere, so get both numbers in writing along with how a lead gets classified as theirs rather than yours.
When the team supplies business you would not otherwise have closed, in enough volume to more than cover what you pay for it. An agent adding $75,000 of provided leads at 50 percent to their own $75,000 finishes roughly $35,600 ahead of going alone, despite paying the team lead $41,250.
The traditional team cap advantage shrinks $1,000 a year and reaches zero in year six, because the individual cap declines to the same $10,000 floor while the team cap does not move. Power Team at $5,000 stays below the floor permanently.
No, and they are not even the same kind of thing. Power Team is an earned team designation requiring $40 million in volume or 140 transactions in an anniversary year, which gives members a $5,000 cap and a permanent $250 transaction fee ceiling. Power Award is individual production recognition at 24 transactions or $10 million, which reduces the technology fee and doubles first line revenue share. One is collective, one is individual, and the qualifications are completely different.
Yes. Epique offers cap credit and cap deferment for transferring agents, which removes most of the cost of moving part way through a cap year. The trade is that an agent taking either one cannot earn Power Award until their cap reset date, which means giving up the reduced technology fee, the doubled first-line revenue share and the equity award for that period. For most transferring agents the credit is worth more than what it costs. For a high producer who would have cleared 24 transactions or $10 million anyway, it may not be. Neither cap credit nor cap deferment appears in the published agreement, so confirm the terms in writing rather than assuming them.
No. The $5,000 threshold that drops your per-side ceiling from $500 to $250 starts at zero when you join, so a transferring agent pays the higher ceiling again until they have paid $5,000 in transaction fees at Epique. It also resets every anniversary year after that.
A teams division handling onboarding, support and training, which is the part that determines whether a move takes two weeks or two months. There is also an annual leadership retreat in Orlando with rooms covered by the company, a day of training and a Disney day including a spouse and two children. The team lead's own cap is the standard $15,000 declining to $10,000.