Considering the Ministry of Justice‘S ongoing legal battle with the National Association of Real Estate Agents (NAR), Sue Yannaccone – the president and CEO of Brands everywhere And Advisors everywhere — know that the real estate legal landscape will remain challenging in 2025. But that is not what she wants to focus on with her company in the coming year.
“I absolutely believe that the legal environment is still there and there’s a lot going on, but it’s really critical that we focus on… helping our agents grow, helping our affiliates to help us grow and refocus on business in the coming year,” said Yannaccone. .
“After going through everything we’ve been through on the legal side this year, I feel so safe and have so much confidence in our legal team, but now I want to focus on business and driving transactions for our companies.”
In the real estate industry, growth is a common goal for 2025. And at Anywhere, Yannaccone said this goal is twofold. On the one hand, the company wants to welcome more franchisees to its six brands, but it also wants to help grow its existing franchises and its own brokerage operations.
“We recently announced a number of major deals and we are really building the strength of our brands,” said Yannaccone. “The trust we have with consumers within the Anywhere ecosystem is so strong, so we’re really focused on that and just want to further integrate our businesses and leverage our scale to drive growth and efficiencies within the business.”
In seeking greater efficiencies – both within the company and for agents and clients in the transaction process – Yannaccone said Anywhere is evaluating its technology and support services, including title insurance.
“We’re really looking at the opportunity to leverage scale and capture a greater share of integrated transactions within our business, whether it’s titles or other services,” Yannaccone said. “Upward enables our subsidiaries to be part of a title joint venture with us, even if they don’t have the individual scale to do so themselves.”
Yannaccone said she really wants to focus on that business in the coming year to help Anywhere branches grow and tap into other revenue streams. While initiatives like Upward Anywhere help streamline the real estate transaction for both consumers and agents, the company also uses technology to be more efficient.
“Within our brands, we’ve launched things like Listing Concierge Coldwell bankerand then Corcoran Co-Pilot was launched last year and really helps our agents be more efficient,” said Yannaccone.
“We are actively exploring how we can leverage AI and other tools on the contract-to-close part of the transaction to read and process contracts and enter data faster and with a lower error rate. And that allows our agents to spend more time with the consumer on the transaction side, and it creates more efficiency within the organization. Everything we do is through the lens of, ‘How can we move quickly while providing exceptional service?’”
When looking for ways to improve the business, Yannaccone and Anywhere leaders don’t have to look far for a variety of expert opinions, thanks to the company’s vast network of affiliates and franchisees.
“The insights we can gather – not only in data but also in insights from dialogue – are one of the advantages that a company like Anywhere has. I head both the brokerage and the franchise organization so that the franchisees can learn from my experience running a brokerage, but just as importantly, we can learn from the member companies,” said Yannaccone.
“We can discover what is really going on in a particular market or what agents really need. But we’ve really stepped up and ramped up communications in 2024, and I don’t see that stopping. I love being as close to boots on the ground as possible.”
Despite Anywhere’s extensive reach and scale from its franchise network, Yannaccone attributes the company’s ability to pivot and act quickly to the high level of communication within the organization’s leadership team.
“While we are large and have a lot of scale, we also have a lot of experience and some very experienced leaders within our company who know how to come together and work to make and execute decisions quickly, which is critical to any business .” said Yannaccone.
“You can turn a boat around very quickly if you all row together and have the same message and infrastructure to spread. And that is something we have been very consciously working on.”
Looking ahead, Yannaccone knows that Anywhere will certainly leverage the knowledge and experience of its leaders to meet the challenges that the new year will almost certainly bring.
“I think we are still an industry that is ripe for change – whether that’s organic or inorganic change – and I see that as an opportunity,” she said. “I think we need to look at these moments as: how can we take the lessons we’ve learned through these changes and their implementation and continue to take them forward?
“There is no room for complacency as leaders and as an industry. We must always challenge ourselves and raise the bar. To do more and better, we will have to continue with that agile mentality.”
