HousingWireHousingWire
Given the Department of Justice’s ongoing legal battle with the National Association of Realtors (NAR), Sue Yannaccone — the president and CEO of Anywhere Brands and Anywhere Advisors — knows that the legal landscape for real estate in 2025 will continue to be a challenge. But that isn’t what she wants her firm to focus on in the year ahead.
“I definitely believe that the legal environment is still there and there’s a lot going on, but it is really critical that we focus on … helping our agents grow, helping our affiliates grow and focusing back on business in the coming year,” Yannaccone said.
“After going through all that we have with the legal landscape this year, I feel so secure and have such confidence in our legal team, but now I want to focus forward on business and driving transactions for our companies.”
Across the real estate industry, growth is a common goal for 2025. And at Anywhere, Yannaccone said that goal is twofold. On one hand, the company is looking to welcome more franchisees to its six brands, but it also wants to help its existing franchises and owned brokerage businesses grow.
“We’ve recently announced some big deals and we are really leaning into amplifying the power of our brands,” Yannaccone said. “The trust we have with the consumers within the ecosystem of Anywhere is so strong, so we are really focused on that and just further integrating our businesses and leveraging our scale to amplify growth and efficiency within the business.”
In seeking increased efficiency — both within the company and for agents and clients in the transaction process — Yannaccone said Anywhere is evaluating its technology and ancillary services, including title insurance.
“We are really looking at the opportunity to leverage scale and to capture more of the integrated transaction within our business, whether that be title or other services,” Yannaccone said. “Upward, our title joint venture, allows our affiliates to be part of a title joint venture with us, even if they don’t have the individual scale to do so on their own.”
Yannaccone said she really wants to focus on that venture in the coming year to help Anywhere affiliates to grow and capture other revenue streams. Although initiatives like Upward are helping Anywhere to streamline the real estate transaction for both consumers and agents, the company is also using technology to be more efficient.
“Within our brands, we have launched things like Listing Concierge at Coldwell Banker, and then Corcoran Co-Pilot was launched last year, which are really helping our agents to be more efficient,” Yannaccone said.
“We are actively looking at how we can leverage AI and other tools on the contract-to-close piece of the transaction to read and process contracts and enter data at a faster rate and with a lower error rate. And that allows for our agents to spent more time with the consumer on the transaction side of things, and it create more efficiency within the organization. Everything we are doing is through the lens of, ‘How do we move fast while providing exceptional service?’”
When looking for ways to improve the business, Yannaccone and Anywhere leadership don’t have to look far for a variety of expert opinions, thanks to the company’s massive network of affiliates and franchisees.
“The insights that we are able to glean — not just in data but insights from dialogue — is one of the advantages that a company like Anywhere has. I sit atop both the brokerage business and the franchise business, so the franchisees can learn from my experience leading a brokerage, but just as importantly, we can learn from the affiliates,” Yannaccone said.
“We can find out what is truly going on in a given market or what agents really need. But we really leaned in and ramped up communication in 2024, and I don’t see that stopping. I love being as close as I can to the boots on the ground.”
Despite Anywhere’s large scope and scale from its franchise network, Yannaccone attributes the company’s ability to pivot and act quickly to the high level of communication across the organizational leadership team.
“While we are large and have a lot of scale, we also have a lot of experience and some very seasoned leaders within our company that know how to come together and work to make decisions quickly and execute, which is critical for any company,” Yannaccone said.
“You can very quickly turn a boat around if you are all rowing together and you have the same messaging and the infrastructure to disseminate. And that is something we’ve been very intentional about building.”
Looking ahead, Yannaccone knows that Anywhere will most certainly be leveraging the knowledge and experience of its leaders to navigate the challenges the new year will almost certainly bring.
“I think we are still an industry that is ripe for change — whether that is organic or inorganic change — and I look at that as an opportunity,” she said. “I think we have to look at these moments as, how do we take the lessons that we learned through these changes and the execution of it and carry them forward?
“There is no space for complacency as leaders and as an industry. We always need to challenge ourselves and raise the bar. To do more and to do better, we are going to have to continue to carry that agile mindset forward.”
