Why brokerages overspend on technology?
Let’s say you are a 100-agent brokerage.
Here’s an experiment I encourage you to do:
Reach out to any of your agent software vendors (like CRM, marketing, or lead gen platform)
Ask what was the usage rate among your agents last month. “Out of 100 agents, how many have logged in at least once during March 2025?”
You’ll be amazed… or maybe not… but it’s probably around 15-20%.
Of course, this will vary greatly across different brokerages and real estate teams.
However, real estate is traditionally a “slow adopter” and heavily lags behind industries like finance, e-commerce, or media at the forefront of tech innovation.
There are many objective reasons: fragmented market, agents are predominantly independent contractors, data silos, slow feedback loops and the famous "If it ain't broke, don’t fix it".
Yet, despite all of this, there is one thing I don’t understand.
If our use of technology is so different from other industries, then why are we charged the same?
Per-seat pricing makes no sense in real estate.
Let me explain.
If, for example, a Manufacturing company hires full-time salaried sales representatives, they are contractually obliged to use whatever software the employer throws at them.
CRM for tracking deals, Slack for communication, Monday.com for projects etc.
It’s basically a sales representative’s JOB to use different software tools daily, because if you don’t, you get fired.
Naturally, tech adoption is almost 100%, and the per-seat pricing model makes total sense.
The more staff you have, the more revenue you generate, and the more seats you buy. All fair and square.
Things are very different in real estate
Per-seat pricing makes no sense in real estate.
When recruiting real estate agents, offering a compelling technology suite can help attract better talent, but it is very hard to predict if they end up using the tech stack provided or not.
So on one hand, the brokerage incurs real upfront costs paying for each agent seat, but on the other side has no ROI guarantee.
Per-seat pricing model that works really well for W2 employees turns into “Just-in-case-pricing-model” for independent contractors.
Here’s a transaction management tool - just in case you have a closing.
Here’s a dialer - just in case you decide to cold call.
Here’s an AI-powered listing tool - just in case you get a listing.
What are the alternative pricing models?
Two weeks ago, I spoke with a broker who told me, “Max, I have 800 agents, but only 200 are truly in production mode. How can we make it work?”
That moment truly helped me understand the brokerage’s perspective.
It makes no sense to charge the same per-seat fee for 200 producing agents and 600 non-producers.
But just to be fair to tech companies, they need a way to figure out how much to charge each customer. The cost of service for a 10-agent brokerage is very different compared to a 10,000-agent brokerage in terms of IT infrastructure, support & development.
Luckily, there are alternative pricing models that are a better fit for our industry, like Usage-Based (Consumption) Pricing or Value-Based Pricing.
At Agently, we were inspired to introduce Value-Based pricing. As it derives from the name, instead of charging per agent count, we price our product based on value delivered to our customers.
For example:
The average salary of an Agent Success Manager or an Onboarding Manager, or an Operations Manager is around $94k per year. Source: Glassdoor https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/agent-success-manager-salary-SRCH_KO0,21.htm?countryRedirect=true
Whether you need to onboard & train 5 agents or 50, you still pay $94k per year.
At Agently, we are delivering 10x cost savings & ROI. So our fixed platform fee would be $9.4k per year or $780 per month.
As a result, we’re helping brokerages onboard, train & provide ongoing coaching to an unlimited number of agents for a fixed monthly fee, saving 10x in costs. That’s value-based pricing in a nutshell.
This approach works just as well for other Agently features.
Pricing the product the right way helps us translate our Agent Success Platform into Brokerage Success Platform, where agent successes lead to brokerage success.
I hope to inspire a different approach to technology pricing in real estate.