SAN DIEGO — It’s not an easy time to run a brokerage right now with agents feeling like “they’re fighting uphill,” Anthony Lamacchia of Lamacchia Realty told brokers at Inman Connect San Diego on Wednesday. But it’s also an exciting time because the market is in the process of normalizing, Lamacchia said.
Anthony Lamacchia | Lamacchia Realty
During the panel, brokerage executives, including Lamacchia, Alex Vidal of ERA Real Estate and Leo Pareja of eXp Realty, discussed how the shifting market, new buyer behavior and new technology are changing how brokers approach their business.
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“The more crazy [the market], the more opportunity there is — but you have to be able to stomach it,” Lamacchia added.
Moderator Clelia Peters of Era Ventures pointed out that through this challenging market, more real estate businesses have opted to consolidate. So, what does it take to run a stable brokerage, she wondered?
“It’s all about agent productivity,” Vidal said.
Alex Vidal | ERA Real Estate
Other factors like commission compression, low inventory and more are “just noise,” he asserted.
Pareja added that most agents who struggled in the past few years have now bowed out of the industry.
“If an agent is up 10 percent now, that means they took it from someone else [who left the industry],” he said.
When thinking about agent productivity, panelists also discussed how technology and AI play a role in that productivity. And although AI will certainly continue to change the industry significantly in the next few years, panelists said that brokers and agents can’t afford to underestimate the power of relationships.
Leo Pareja | eXp Realty
“AI is only going to get you to a point, where at some point you’re going to have to speak to somebody … and that’s just not being taught across the board,” Vidal said.
Any broker who wants to grow their business in the future starts doing that by building relationships with real estate professionals in their market and neighboring markets, Lamacchia pointed out.
“You have to make friends before you need a friend,” he said. “You can have the best tech in the world, best CRM, whatever, that’s not going to get you far in terms of relationships.”
However, the shift toward using AI tools every day — including many agents and brokers in the audience who said they go to ChatGPT or another AI model before using Google — is something that brokers need to stay on top of.
“I [asked] this in January, and like three hands went up,” Pareja said. “I promise when we’re in New York in January, all your hands will go up.”
Clelia Warburg Peters | Era Ventures
“So what’s going to happen is that where the eyeballs go will dictate the lead,” he added.
The three panelists also said that they are implementing AI in ways that will help them cut costs by being able to expand without hiring quite as many support staff, for instance. It will also help them and agents become more efficient while staying on a budget.
As for industry consolidation, the execs said that acquisitions offer an opportunity for both sides — the acquiring firm to keep growing, and the acquired firm to remain in operation at a lower cost and with added stability.
“It goes back to figuring out what business you want to be in,” Pareja said.
“I’m in the unit economic business … With high volume teams, it costs less for them to be with eXp than go it alone.”
