Above, Anthony Lamacchia at RISMedia’s 2025 CEO & Leadership Exchange
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Capping off three days of high-profile panels, speeches and one-on-ones at RISMedia’s Annual CEO & Leadership Exchange, independent broker/owner and national trainer Anthony Lamacchia took the stage in the Grand Ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel on September 5 to deliver a candid and rousing presentation on succeeding amid significant change.
Getting into the weeds on transaction-level practices and issues—from negotiating commissions to moderating seller expectations—Lamacchia also danced through the crowd in his trademark free-wheeling style, urging an audience of both top agents and brokers not to fear the “danger zone” of difficult conversations with clients, even as markets tighten.
“If you’re getting hit with an argument about commission at every listing appointment, I have news for you—you’re not navigating things correctly,” he said.
Lamacchia’s presentation served as an exclamation point at RISMedia’s 37th annual gathering of residential real estate’s top minds, taking the many high-level conversations on business practice, policy, technology and strategy and boiling the discourse down to the individual level. As hundreds of top producers from the area joined brokers from around the country, Lamacchia added a deeply practical theme to the event, telling agents to apply larger lessons on transparency to their everyday business practices.
“Your clients are not going to solely listen to what you say verbally. I don’t care if they’re your friend, if they’re your relative,” Lamacchia said. “My grandfather used to say, ‘Everybody is friends until it comes down to the almighty dollar.’”
As the theme of the event coalesced around trust and transparency with consumers, Lamacchia detailed how he saw those values playing out with consumers. Trust is something that is earned at least partially through effort, he said, and honesty shouldn’t be confused with being “blunt.”
Among many other things, Lamacchia said that agents who get pushback on commissions in a post-settlement world need to “improve their process” leading up to listing appointments—as well as shift their mentality. He claimed agents should be getting pushback only about 25% of the time.
“Number one: you’re the doctor, they’re the patient. They don’t dictate what you go over. I see that a lot with new agents,” he said.
New agents especially are apt to fall all over themselves to rush and meet the seller’s needs, rather than presenting their services and process up front, Lamacchia said. Much of that can come over a phone call, and more can get sent over to the prospective client before an in-person meeting.
“Getting your commission starts ahead of time, articulating your value. When you go on a listing appointment and you sit across from a seller, probably 40% at best of what you’re saying is sinking in,” he claimed.
Seller’s mentality
Though commissions were a hot topic throughout the event, Lamacchia also talked about something else that is particularly salient in today’s transitioning market—client expectations. Using his early career as an example of what not to do, he described the balancing act of giving frank advice with the need to avoid bruising people’s egos.
Noting that many sellers still have wildly unrealistic ideas of what their home is worth, Lamacchia said agents need to guide sellers more gently than they probably want to. He described how early on in his career he lost a listing after telling clients “that’s not going to happen” when they brought up unrealistic pricing.
“You should try to make it so that the highest comp that you show is not higher than what you expect or what you think you’re going to list that home for,” he said.
One way to help get to that number is to gently show a seller how much nicer that comp property is than their home, which is a way of showing a seller their property should be listed below a particular number without saying “your house sucks,” Lamacchia explained.
He also urged agents to try hard to avoid saying a number themselves, particularly in this market given where seller mentalities are.
“You have some back and forth. You try to get them to the right number without you saying the number. You say the number, that number gets pinned to the back of your head when you walk out,” he warned. “They’re never going to forget that you said that number. If the home doesn’t sell, you’re going to get the blame because you suggested the number.”
While qualifying that he didn’t want to turn his high-energy talk into “an economic thing,” Lamacchia also jumped over to talk about the buy side and how agents need to “keep buyers motivated” based on shifting market dynamics.
“They hear all this negativity and they start to get down on buying,” he said. “This is why you as the agent have to be able to rattle off the benefits of homeownership all the time. Right off the tip of your tongue.”
Even more pertinent, Lamacchia said that this time of year is the best time to be a buyer, seasonally speaking, based on a lack of competition. That is particularly true this year as inventory spikes in many markets.
“I’ve been saying it for years, I’ve said it on the news, I think only 5% of the population ever listens to me, but the best time of year to buy is the fall,” he said.
That is the kind of topic you can put out on social media or in everyday conversations, he said. Lamacchia noted that some sellers might hear this and wonder if they are listing at a bad time.
The solution to that is the same principles that should underlie the rest of how agents approach these difficult topics, he said, which might include telling sellers that it is okay to delay listing until a later point based on their specific situation.
“All you really have to do is be completely honest with your clients. Tell them how the market actually works. Learn the market inside out and you’ll do a lot of business,” he said.
