Brokerage acquisition spree & real estate transformation
KW, Redfin, Rocket, and denied rumors about BHHS & Compass.
It’s 2025 and the brokerage acquisition spree is in full swing.
What exactly are they buying? Future cash flow.
Who generates cash flow? Agents.
Agents handle the last mile of every real estate transaction. And as Zillow learned the hard way, it’s not as simple to completely eliminate the “human relationships” part.
So agents became a commodity. Today, you’re wearing a red badge, tomorrow you update your email signature to a blue one. No hard feelings, just business.
Despite being commoditized, agents’ fiduciary role in a real estate transaction is so vital that companies are willing to spend BILLIONS to acquire a workforce consisting of INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS.
This is mindblowing. No intellectual property, no real estate, no hard assets. Just a lot of independent contracts.
Spending billions to acquire thousands of 1099 contractors of which only 10-15% generate the most transaction volume, knowing that nothing is preventing them from leaving tomorrow.
If only a fraction of these funds were invested IN DEVELOPING AGENTS vs. BUYING THEM - we as an industry could’ve been in a very different place.
In fact, I firmly believe this is exactly what’s going to happen.
Rocket made a very smart move. Here’s why.
Redfin’s agents are W-2 employees, not 1099 contractors.
Rocket understands that in this highly competitive market, you don’t need MORE agents, you need a highly skilled professional workforce powered by technology.
And if there’s one thing our industry doesn’t know how to do well - it’s how to develop talent and turn agents into professionals.
Current State of Agent Development
After 4 years of building sales enablement tools for real estate, it’s safe to say that no one gets excited when they hear learning & development. It’s secondary.
Everyone wants to just hire-ready made top producers skipping all the training.
As a result, our industry suffers from poor people development practices.
Let’s look at what brokerages are doing today to develop their most precious asset that other companies are willing to pay big money for.
Agent Universities
This is my favorite one. I personally seen a dozen of those.
It’s a glorified self-service training video collection with close-to-zero usage rate.
Not because the content is bad! Some brokerages actually produce really high-quality resources, but the distribution is fundamentally broken.
Most agents are simply unaware of what’s available. Even if they are it’s clear which training or when to take is there a timeframe for completion, and is there some accountability tied to it?
Usually, it’s just a collection of videos sitting somewhere in the depths of the intranet
Mostly used as a recruitment tool “We offer the best-in-class training! Join today!”
Not sure how a self-service “Agent University” is any better than a self-service YouTube.
In-person or Live Training Sessions
Sometimes sporadic: “Look’s like transactions were down last month, let’s throw a training session!”
This is the motivation behind most training. There’s no continuity. There’s no follow-up. There are no next steps. And there’s a way to measure the impact.
It happens, 10% off agents show up, and here’s a recording for everyone else.
However one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work for agents.
New agents have totally different needs than top producers. And top-producers have totally different needs than non-producers.
What’s the point of hosting the “Building your personal brand and online presence” course for agents who had 0 closings in the last 12 months?
One-to-many coaching
Please don’t get me wrong on this one. Coaching is one of the most powerful instruments to drive both personal and business growth. However one-to-one personalized coaching with an individual accountability system in place is something only top-producing agents can afford.
No coach can turn agents into top producers without a process, because success is always a result of executing a process and NOT just motivational talk.
(uplifting voice) “Be that person you always aspired to be.”
(uplifting voice) “Don’t let you stop you!”
(uplifting voice) "Let’s rise and…”
… and then comes Monday after. You’re still hungover from all the success you imagined in your head, but the main question remains “What can I do right now to generate business? And how exactly can I do it.”
Coaching sessions are just short moments of knowledge transfer. What happens after is far more important. Without ongoing accountability, it’s just a dose of motivation that quickly evaporates.
Mentornship programs
Whilst being a great idea on paper, it takes a lot of hard work from a mentor to take a new agent from 0 to 1.
All that work for 50% commission ASSUMING agents will ever get their first deal.
As a result for most mentors, it’s just a burden with low ROI.
System for Agent Success
The industry needs a system to cultivate agent success.
Robust, scalable, repeatable, and affordable system.
And if invest a small fraction of what is being spent on acquisitions back into our agents we have all the chances to succeed in building a sustainable and thriving industry.
At Agently we are at the front of this innovation. We are the pioneers in this space.
And today we’re launching a beta version of the first end-to-end Agent Success Platform focusing on driving efficiencies across 4 main agent segments:
Get new agents into production 8x faster
Elevate mid-tier agents from 3 to 10 transactions
Revive non-producing agents before they quit
Retain top agents & build a culture of success
Learn more at agently.com
