Photos by AJ Canaria
As steward to several of residential real estate’s most storied brands, Sue Yannaccone has a unique vantage point, one that is both diverse and expansive. Despite the size and scope of her purview, however, there’s a common theme that connects it all: innovation.
“We’ve been around for a long time, but we’re constantly innovating,” said Yannaccone to the more than 400 brokerage executives gathered in Washington, D.C., September 3 – 5, for RISMedia’s 37th Annual CEO & Leadership Exchange. “I don’t think you stay in an organization like ours that is constantly growing and delivering value to consumers and to agents and to broker/owners without constantly innovating. One of the things that is such a benefit of being a company with scale like ours is our ability to learn and then pass on those learnings to our customers.”
During a one-on-one conversation with RISMedia Founder & CEO John Featherston, the Anywhere Brands and Anywhere Advisors CEO stressed the need for real estate leaders and professionals to be forward thinking, now more than ever. A prominent topic throughout the event, Yannaccone agreed that arguably the biggest innovation the industry is currently confronting is AI. But she issued a prudent warning.
“There is still a lot of hot air out there about it,” she said. “There’s just a lot of nonsense right now. One of the ways we talk about it is truly leveraging AI to make us more efficient, to make us more effective, to integrate and streamline the transaction. I think about it as augment, don’t abdicate.”
According to Yannaccone, AI, along with any technology, should be viewed through the lens of how it can help real estate professionals be more efficient, taking care of tasks and responsibilities that are not the highest and best use of their time, yet are still critical to getting the job done. While the efficiencies that AI can create are “phenomenal,” however, the burden of responsibility lies with the real estate professional, she stressed.
“You cannot allocate the responsibility because no matter what the AI does, you own what you put out there,” she said. “I fear sometimes that the run towards AI without truly understanding the power of it can get some people in trouble. It is about having responsibility for it and not totally abdicating that.”
With that in mind, Yannaccone shared that Anywhere has already put employee policies and training in place to ensure AI is used responsibly. This strategy, like most that Yannaccone has implemented over the years, stems from her consistent focus on the needs of brokers and agents in the trenches.
“You run a huge organization, but when I talk to you, I feel as if you’re operating a two- or three-office firm or an agent team,” said Featherston to Yannaccone. “How do you manage your organization in such a way that a family atmosphere permeates your organization?”
First and foremost, Yannaccone gave a nod toward her team. Secondly, she pointed to her beginnings as a real estate agent.
“I understand what it’s like to be an agent out on the streets,” she said. “It’s been a hot minute…I don’t sell real estate anymore; I am not out in the trenches. But that does not mean that I have to be naive to what it takes every day to get a transaction done. So my leaders, I meet with all of them constantly on getting that feedback loop. I’m talking to our agents, to our broker/owners. We don’t build stuff in a vacuum. I build for what our customers need, and that’s the agent, the broker/owner and the consumer.
“For me, it’s about constantly saying we may think we know, but we don’t really know,” she added. “Trust, but verify—go ask the practitioner. Don’t operate in a vacuum.”
Yannaccone also addressed the urgency for real estate professionals—who often excel when it comes to relationship-building—to incorporate data into their business strategies.
“It’s a relationship business,” she said. “No matter what, at the end of the day, when you’re sitting across the table from somebody, you understand that gut reaction. But you’ve got to layer it over now with data, and the data tells, oftentimes, a very different story or a different angle to the story you’ve been telling. And so one of the things that I have done and we have done as a company and as a team over the last several years is really let the data tell the story. If you’re not leading with the consumer data, if you’re not leading with the financial data, and you’re just running by your gut, you’re going to miss a lot because it’s changing too fast.”
Yannaccone also commented on increased consolidation among residential real estate firms, confirming that Anywhere is also focused on growing through mergers and acquisitions—with the hiring of Steve Capezza as head of growth and M&A earlier this year, the company is “off to the races,” she said. But, as she approaches all areas of the business, Yannaccone will make sure growth strategies are handled with precision.
“(W)e’re going to continue to see some consolidation in the industry, and we are continually playing an active role in that,” she said. “There are lots of conversations taking place, and I will always lean into those conversations. But it’s also going to be through the lens of being a steward of the enterprise, which means they have to make financial sense, there has to be cultural alignment, all the things that make an acquisition work for both parties—care of the organization you’re acquiring and the agents as well as the ongoing financial success for both parties.”
While Yannaccone admitted that “the spreadsheet matters a lot,” she also emphasized the need to care for the individual agent. “That’s really important on the recruiting and retention front,” she said, lauding Anywhere’s 31% year-over-year increase in recruiting earlier in the year, along with retention rates over 95%—closer to 98% within the firm’s luxury brands. She attributes this success to consistent innovation and giving agents what they need. “We are focused on the integration of the transaction, providing the tools and services that allow agents to focus on what they’re uniquely qualified to do,” she said.
Wrapping up the discussion, Featherston asked Yannaccone to impart a closing “pearl of wisdom” to the audience of real estate leaders. In response, she issued a timely plea.
“I’d ask everybody in the room, from a business perspective, to pull it up to 50,000 feet,” said Yannaccone. “At all of these events, we get really laser focused on the topic of the moment, whether it be some of the lawsuit stuff, whether it be AI. But you cannot look at the future of your business or the industry in a vacuum. It is not myopic. It is not one subject, it is not one thing. All of this is going to interplay to change the way we’re doing business going forward. So I would encourage everybody to just pick it up a little bit. Take everything you’re hearing and go back and say, where do I want to be in six months, in a year? What is going to help me get there? I believe it’s important that we do that because we get down these rabbit holes and we kind of lose the plot line, which is ‘how are we serving the consumer in the biggest transaction of their life?'”
