One of the biggest misconceptions in real estate is that luxury clients hire luxury agents.
They don’t. They hire certainty.
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Yet every year, I watch agents spend enormous amounts of energy trying to look successful enough to attract higher-end clients. They upgrade their branding. Redesign their websites. Purchase luxury marketing materials, even cars and jewelry.
And then they wonder why premium listings still seem out of reach.
They’re buying confidence. Not confidence in your personality. Confidence in your expertise.
Gillian Oxley via LinkedIn
Recently, I was on a coaching call with Gillian Oxley, a Royal LePage luxury agent in Toronto. Today, she is one of the most respected agents in her market, but her story didn’t begin with luxury marketing, exclusive events or carefully crafted branding.
In fact, it began with a crisis.
After spending years buying, renovating and selling homes, she found herself holding two luxury properties when the 2007 market collapsed.
“I was literally frozen, with no clue what to do next,” she told me. “I remember my father saying, ‘Well, you’re in a real pickle. What are you going to do now?’ And I said, ‘Don’t worry Dad. I’m going to get my real estate license.’”
That’s not the beginning of a luxury real estate story. That’s the beginning of an expertise story. Because what happened next is where most agents get it wrong.
When people hear that Oxley became one of the top agents in Toronto’s prestigious Rosedale neighborhood, they assume there must have been a breakthrough moment.
There wasn’t. There was mastery.
“The one thing that I believe I did differently,” she said, “was I made a conscious effort to be an area expert. I learned about every house in my area, checked the owners and how long they had been in their homes and educated myself on the various nuances of the neighborhood.”
That’s the part most people skip. The industry loves shortcuts. Consumers don’t. The truth is that expertise compounds quietly for years before anyone recognizes it.
Most agents are trying to become known. The best agents are trying to become undeniable. And those are very different pursuits.
Years later, Oxley became the top agent in her market segment. Not because she branded herself as the expert. Because she became one.
That’s an important distinction.
The best listings are rarely won at the listing appointment. They’re won years beforehand through preparation, knowledge, and consistency.
But expertise alone isn’t enough. Eventually, every successful agent encounters a different challenge: Growth.
One of the most common patterns I see among top producers is that their reputation grows faster than their infrastructure. Clients receive exceptional service because the agent personally touches everything.
Until they can’t.
The business grows. Complexity grows. Expectations grow. And eventually, the agent becomes the bottleneck. For Oxley, systems were the key to changing that pattern. “The major impact [coaching] had on my business was the creation of systems and the ability to streamline processes across my business and my team,” she said.
That observation matters because it exposes another misconception in our industry. A lot of agents believe exceptional service comes from exceptional effort. It doesn’t.
Exceptional service comes from exceptional systems. Effort can create success. Systems create consistency. And consistency is what clients ultimately trust.
The highest-performing businesses aren’t built on heroic individuals. They’re built on repeatable standards. That’s true whether you’re selling a $500,000 home or a $15 million estate.
Which brings me to perhaps the most insightful thing Oxley shared during our conversation.
She told me about a seller who once called asking for a referral because they assumed her firm wouldn’t be interested in a lower-priced ($1 million) property.
The experience forced her team to ask a difficult question: “Were we in the business of luxury sales or luxury service?”
Then she answered it herself. “Suffice to say, I always want to be in the business of luxury service.”
That’s a profound distinction. Because luxury isn’t a price point. It’s a standard.
The best brands in our industry aren’t built around the homes they sell. They’re built around the experience they consistently deliver. Consumers may remember the property, but they will definitely remember the service. And that’s why some businesses continue to grow regardless of market conditions, while others constantly chase the next transaction.
One final story from Oxley perfectly illustrates the point.
During a listing presentation, a seller asked a question she couldn’t answer. Many agents would have improvised (some did). Many would have guessed (some did). Many would have tried to sound smart (some did).
Instead, she said something remarkably simple: “Honestly, I don’t know.”
She promised to research the answer and follow up. She won the listing.
The other agents attempted to answer the question. The seller later revealed it had been a test. The question was intentionally designed to see who would admit they didn’t know.
The client wasn’t evaluating knowledge. He was evaluating trust. And that’s ultimately the lesson, not just for luxury real estate, but for leadership itself.
The industry spends too much time teaching agents how to appear successful and not enough time teaching them how to become trustworthy.
Trust is built through expertise. Trust is reinforced through systems. Trust is demonstrated through honesty. And trust cannot be faked. Neither can mastery. That’s why the best listings are years in the making.
Verl Workman is the founder and CEO of Workman Success Systems and author of Raving Referrals for Real Estate Agents. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Instagram.
Social lead gen hub POP.STORE is expanding its focus on real estate, helping agents turn content and social media engagement into measurable business results. Troy Palmquist talks with GM Jo Wong about the platform’s upcoming VidCon appearance featuring Andrew Jevin and Glennda Baker.
For years, real estate professionals have been building audiences, publishing content and influencing consumer decisions. Now the creator economy is beginning to recognize them as influencers in their own right.
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While VidCon Anaheim is traditionally associated with YouTubers, influencers, brands and creator-economy companies. POP.STORE is using its title sponsorship to argue that the definition of “creator” is expanding, with real estate as a significant part of that expansion. That’s why this year’s VidCon will bring two real estate heavyweights, Andrew Jevin and Glennda Baker, to its stage.
POP.STORE didn’t initially set out to serve agents, but it stumbled into the opportunity after talking with Jevin about how fragmented agents’ marketing systems had become. “That’s really how we ended up building what we have today with the real estate agent network and community,” Wong said.
Jo Wong
According to Wong, most agents don’t think of themselves as creators and influencers primarily; they view their social media content as part of marketing their core real estate business. However, Wong believes that’s a false distinction.
“Creators and influencers are just people putting out content that people want to learn from,” she said. Agents “don’t realize that their content is actually influencing people’s decisions.” POP.STORE is focusing on a behavior shift that’s already happening in the real estate industry, without being acknowledged.
While many agents put out attention-getting content, it’s a one-way street. In Wong’s view, attention has value only if it converts. She referred in our conversation to an agent whose post went viral, garnering millions of views. At the end of the day, it did nothing for her business because of a lack of conversion infrastructure.
The agent “collected no information, no leads,” Wong said. After a little time, all of the attention on the post “just went away.” POP.STORE seeks to close that attention-conversion loop by creating infrastructure that helps agents capture value from the audiences they’re already building.
“Yes, real estate agents are influencers,” Wong said. That realization inspired her to create a platform to highlight the importance and potential of real estate agents at the industry’s largest creator economy event.
As POP.STORE positions itself at the intersection of creator tools and proptech, bringing Andrew Jevin and Glennda Baker together onstage at this month’s VidCom Anaheim just makes sense.
Jevin represents the agent who understands systems, automation and audience building. Baker represents the power of authentic content and personal branding. Together, they’re examples of the type of creator-business POP.STORE believes more agents can become.
“Every missed response is potentially a lost deal,” Baker said in a statement ahead of her appearance. “POP.STORE brought everything into one system so I can actually keep up with the demand I’ve built.”
If you’re already influencing consumer decisions, you’re an influencer. That means consistently publishing useful content that builds trust, not just posting when you’ve got a new listing to promote.
Consumers care more about where they will live than what they’ll buy. Local expertise is your competitive advantage because it’s difficult to replicate.
Attention alone has limited value. Agent creators need systems that convert engagement into business. Wong sums it up: “Virality is truly not a business.”
Real estate is different from entertainment. You don’t need millions of followers. You need credibility with the right audience. Build your business around relationships rather than chasing vanity metrics.
Creators spend too much time on administrative work and not enough time creating. Whether through automation, systems or AI, the goal is to make content continue generating opportunities after publication.
Wong argues that creators are increasingly focused on audience ownership rather than depending on platforms, brand deals or the luck of the algorithm.
For agents, that translates into:
The goal is to build an audience that you control rather than relying exclusively on paid leads or social media algorithms.
Whether or not you choose to embrace the influencer label, the larger message is clear: Consumers increasingly choose agents the same way social media users choose creators to follow — by engaging with their content, consuming their expertise and developing trust over time.
The key for agents is turning that engagement into action.
Troy Palmquist is the founder and principal at HomeCode Advisors. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Picture an agent scrolling headlines over coffee.
Now, Bed Bath and Beyond acquires Fathom Holdings. She almost laughs at the last one.
The home goods company? Then she sets down her coffee.
Because maybe the headline is not as strange as it sounds. Maybe the strange part is that so many agents still think the transaction starts when the phone rings.
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I am not trying to scare you. I am trying to make sure you are paying attention.
I have sat across the table from enough agents to know that most of them are ignoring these headlines, not because they are careless, but because they are busy. They have clients to call, listings to manage, contracts to negotiate and closings to keep together.
But part of our job as brokers, mentors and advisors is to look up long enough to notice when the ground is shifting. And the ground is shifting.
Because that headline is the one worth reading slowly. Bed Bath and Beyond is not buying a brokerage to sell houses, but rather to be present across the entire arc of homeownership. The search. The financing. The purchase. The closing. The furnishing. The renovation. The maintenance. And eventually, the next move.
That is not just a retail strategy. That is a relationship strategy. And agents need to understand what is being competed for.
The platforms are not trying to replace you. They are trying to get to your client before you do.
The through-line in every one of these deals is about who earns the first conversation — not company size, brand recognition or technology.
If a consumer begins their housing journey inside a search portal, mortgage platform, retail ecosystem or AI-driven recommendation engine, the agent may still be in the transaction but is no longer the first trusted voice in the room. Someone else has already framed what the consumer should expect, what they can afford and what questions they should ask.
That changes the agent’s job in ways that matter.
The agents who will feel the most pressure from this consolidation are the ones who wait — for a lead to come in, for someone to raise their hand, for the phone to ring.
The platform is not waiting.
The platform is present during the browsing phase, the wondering phase, the should-we-or-shouldn’t-we phase. By the time a consumer becomes a formal lead, the platform has often already shaped how they think about the process. The agent’s answer to this is not paid leads or faster follow-up.
It’s earlier presence, being visible in your community before someone is ready, being useful in your content before someone has a question, being consistent with your database so that when life shifts, you are already in the room.
You cannot manufacture trust at the moment someone needs it.
You have to already have it.
Many agents have built real businesses around borrowed attention. Portal leads. Brokerage leads. Paid referral platforms. Relocation pipelines. These sources work, and there is nothing wrong with using them. But borrowed attention always comes with a cost, and that cost tends to rise as fewer companies control more of the consumer pathway.
The question worth asking is simple: If your current lead source changed tomorrow, would you still have a business?
That is not a comfortable question, but it’s necessary. Every agent should be building a direct database, not just a list of names, but a living record of relationships, timing, life changes, housing questions and future possibilities. The agents who know their people will always have more options than those waiting for a platform to send them strangers.
Inventory is power. Visibility is power. And the way listings are distributed, prioritized or withheld is no longer a topic agents can leave to the transaction coordinator.
Sellers deserve a clear explanation of what they are choosing when they choose a marketing strategy. Not a slogan. Not a vague promise about maximum exposure. A clear, direct conversation about trade-offs:
If an agent cannot have that conversation fluently, they are not fully serving the seller. And as more companies build integrated listing and distribution models, the stakes of that conversation are only going to grow.
Mortgage. Title. Insurance. Moving. Renovation. Home services. These are no longer afterthoughts in a transaction. They’re core revenue lines in the economic model behind many of these mergers.
Integrated services can genuinely benefit consumers. Convenience matters. A smoother experience matters. But there is a meaningful difference between a client being offered a well-organized choice and a client being moved through a funnel.
The agent’s job is to help clients understand that difference and to ask the questions an advocate asks:
That is also what separates an agent from a coordinator.
Consumers can find listings. They can read market reports, ask AI for neighborhood summaries, compare mortgage rates and watch a dozen YouTube videos before they ever talk to anyone.
Information is everywhere.
Judgment is not.
The agent who says “I can help you buy or sell” is offering something most platforms can now approximate. The agent who says “Let’s figure out what decision actually serves this stage of your life” is offering something they cannot.
That is advisory work. It does not run on an algorithm. And it is the work that will matter most as more of the transactional layer gets absorbed into platforms.
The lesson in all of this consolidation is not that agents are going away, but the casual version of the agent role is getting harder to defend.
If your value is access, automation will challenge it. If your value is lead response, platforms will control it. If your value is paperwork, technology will compress it.
But if your value is interpretation, trust, local intelligence and decision clarity, consolidation may actually make you more important.
The big companies are racing to own more of the homeownership lifecycle. Agents need to earn more trust in the client’s decision-making process.
That is the work now.
New single-family home sales fell 7.3 percent in May, but the bigger story is the shrinking share of affordable new homes.
New single-family home sales dropped 7.3 percent in May from April and fell 6.8 percent from a year ago, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Median sales prices held at $424,900 — flat year over year, up 2 percent from the prior month, according to the new data released on Wednesday — but that top-line stability is misleading.
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A year ago, roughly one in five new homes sold for under $300,000. In May, it was roughly one in seven. The affordable end of the new construction market is contracting.
“The affordable new home is getting harder to build and harder to find, and that’s the real story,” Maor Greenberg, co-founder and CEO of Spacial, told Inman.
The flat median masks a significant shift in what’s actually selling. Median sales price came in at $424,900, unchanged year over year. But the average sale price hit $540,600, up 5 percent over the same period.
When the average rises but the median stays flat, it means more expensive homes are selling — not that the same homes are getting pricier. The middle of the market hasn’t moved, but the mix of what’s transacting has shifted toward the high end.
Pricier homes are making up a larger share of the mix, pulling the average up, while the median sits still. The composition of the market is shifting, even when the headline price isn’t.
Total inventory rose to 496,000 units in May, and finished homes have taken longer to sell every month this year. It has gone from about three months in January to nearly four months in May.
On its face, that looks like a buyer’s market building. It isn’t, according to Greenberg.
“Higher inventory normally means oversupply, but look at what’s inside the 496,000,” Greenberg said. “Only 118,000 are finished homes. The rest are not started or are under construction. This isn’t a flood of empty move-in-ready houses; it’s a backlog of homes that builders have already committed to, stacking up against a slower buyer pool.”
At the same time, the pipeline of future supply is thinning. The April data Greenberg references showed groundbreaks slowing, while committed-to homes accumulate. It’s a combination that points toward a supply crunch further out.
Greenberg said the disappearance of sub-$300,000 new construction isn’t a mystery. Builders can’t make the economics work at today’s costs for labor, land, and materials, and still price at the entry level. So they build up-market, where margins hold.
“A firm price protects profit margins,” Greenberg said, “but it’s a narrowing business that’s surviving by serving fewer, wealthier buyers and walking away from building entry-level homes.”
That retreat has consequences that compound over time. First-time buyers who were priced out of the existing-home market were supposed to find relief in new construction. That relief isn’t materializing. For a growing share of the market, entry-level homes are not being built.
“For the buyer, the price isn’t high because homes have gotten better or because demand surged,” Greenberg said. “The rung those buyers were reaching for has quietly disappeared.”
| Median Sale Price | Pending Sales | Active Listings | Days on Market | Sold Above List |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $388,834 (+5.1% YoY) | 6,543 (+2.8% YoY) | 20,750 (-3.4% YoY) | 46 days (-2 days YoY) | 49.0% (+2.5 ppt YoY) |
Cook County’s housing market tilted firmly toward sellers in May. Prices climbed, inventory contracted, and buyers competed for fewer available homes. The combination of shrinking supply and steady demand pushed the median sale price above $388,000 and sent nearly half of all listings over asking. If you’re looking to buy here, expect to act quickly and pay a premium.
Here’s what the data showed for Cook County, IL in May 2026, and what buyers and sellers should know heading into summer.
| Median Sale Price | Pending Sales | Active Listings | Days on Market | Buyer-Seller Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $398,771 (+2.0% YoY) | 349,901 (+4.4% YoY) | 1,483,839 (+0.7% YoY) | 49 days (+3 days YoY) | Sellers outnumber buyers by 47% |
Nationally, the housing market continued its gradual thaw. Prices edged up 2% year over year, pending sales rose, and inventory was essentially flat. But the gap between Cook County and the country widened: local prices grew more than twice as fast, inventory shrank here while holding steady elsewhere, and homes sold faster in Cook County than the national median.
“Many cities are undergoing a yearslong reset from the pandemic, with price growth easing and inventory climbing—helping affordability improve as wages rise,” said Chen Zhao, Redfin’s head of economics research. “Pending home sales have increased over the last three months, which is an early sign that buyers and sellers are beginning to re-enter the market. But economic volatility tied to the Iran War is keeping everyone on edge.”
The median sale price in Cook County reached $388,834 in May, a 5.1% increase from a year ago. Nationally, prices rose just 2%. Cook County has appreciated roughly 45% since early 2020, and the pace of growth has stayed elevated even as the post-pandemic frenzy faded. The median price per square foot climbed 7% year over year to $260, suggesting genuine value growth rather than a shift toward larger homes.
Price reductions remained scarce. Only 9.6% of active listings in Cook County carried a price cut, down from 11% a year ago and far below the national average. The typical home sold for 1.3% above its list price, reinforcing that sellers set their asking price with confidence and buyers met it or exceeded it.
More than half of Cook County listings (50.9%) went under contract within two weeks in May, compared with 31.9% nationally. That gap of nearly 20 percentage points has persisted since 2021, reflecting durable local demand that consistently outpaces the rest of the country. Cook County’s off-market-in-two-weeks rate was flat year over year, while the national rate ticked up just 0.2 percentage points.
Supporting that speed: pending sales rose 2.8% year over year, homes sold increased 1.1%, and the median days on market fell to 46 (down 2 from a year ago). Nationally, days on market moved in the opposite direction, rising to 49. The combination paints a clear picture—buyers in Cook County continued to act quickly, and well-priced listings rarely lingered.
Active listings fell 3.4% year over year to 20,750, while nationally inventory was essentially flat (+0.7%). New listings held steady year over year at 6,857, meaning no fresh supply wave arrived to relieve pressure. The age of active inventory dropped to 39 days from 40 a year ago, confirming that homes were being absorbed before they could accumulate.
Cook County had just under 3 months of supply, well below the national figure of nearly 4. That level typically favors sellers. Buyers shopping here faced a market where demand outpaced new inventory, and waiting for more choices to appear offered no clear advantage.
| Price Tier | Median Price (YoY) | Sold (YoY) | DOM (YoY) | % Above List (YoY) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luxury (top 5%) | $1,538,890 (+4.3%) | 991 (+5.2%) | 44 days (-5 days) | 44.7% (+9.1 ppt) |
| High (65th–95th%) | $622,337 (+6.0%) | 4,570 (+1.6%) | 41 days (-3 days) | 55.3% (+4.8 ppt) |
| Non-luxury (35th–65th%) | $366,688 (+4.6%) | 3,721 (-0.8%) | 48 days (0 days) | 49.9% (+1.5 ppt) |
| Starter (5th–35th%) | $230,351 (+4.0%) | 4,034 (-1.0%) | 56 days (0 days) | 37.3% (-0.8 ppt) |
| Bottom (bottom 5%) | $104,193 (+0.1%) | 722 (-9.8%) | 69 days (+8 days) | 22.9% (-0.9 ppt) |
Redfin analysis of MLS data • Rolling three-month period (March–May 2026)
The high tier appreciated fastest at 6% year over year, with more than half of those homes selling above list. Luxury homes ($1.54M median) rose 4.3% and saw a dramatic acceleration in above-list sales, jumping 9 percentage points to nearly 45%. Sales volume in the luxury segment also grew 5.2%, bucking the broader trend of flat-to-declining volume in lower tiers.
At the bottom, prices were flat and sales dropped nearly 10%. Homes in that bracket sat for 69 days—25 more than the high tier—and fewer than a quarter sold above asking. Starter homes performed somewhere in between: prices rose 4%, but volume dipped 1% and above-list activity was modest. Buyers in the upper brackets faced fierce competition; those shopping at lower price points had more room to negotiate.
If you’re buying in Cook County, preparation matters more than patience. Inventory is shrinking, not growing, and half of homes go under contract in under two weeks. Get financing squared away before you begin touring. Be ready to offer at or above list price for well-located homes. Focus your energy on the right tier—competition is fiercest in the high and luxury segments, while starter and bottom-tier homes offer slightly more negotiating room.
If you’re selling, the data supports pricing with confidence but not with recklessness. The average home sold for 1.3% above list, and fewer than 10% of listings needed a price cut. Price accurately from day one and you’ll likely attract offers quickly. Overshoot, and you risk being one of the few properties that sits while the rest of the market moves around you.
Rolling three-month period (March–May 2026). Cities with 50+ sales shown. Click any column header to sort.
| City | Median Sale Price (YoY) | Sold | New List. | Active | DOM | % Above | Supply |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago | $419,749 (+6.3% YoY) | 7,136 | 9,714 | 15,478 | 47 | 46.9% | 3.1 |
| Evanston | $426,745 (-11.1% YoY) | 256 | 309 | 456 | 38 | 47.7% | 2.1 |
| Arlington Heights | $501,700 (+5.6% YoY) | 255 | 355 | 493 | 39 | 53.5% | 2.6 |
| Tinley Park | $339,797 (+3.0% YoY) | 248 | 308 | 474 | 43 | 44.7% | 2.5 |
| Schaumburg | $320,808 (+2.5% YoY) | 246 | 344 | 489 | 43 | 50.1% | 2.8 |
| Palatine | $384,770 (+9.3% YoY) | 232 | 313 | 432 | 43 | 50.1% | 2.5 |
| Orland Park | $384,720 (+5.8% YoY) | 201 | 306 | 437 | 44 | 43.5% | 3.4 |
| Oak Park | $499,701 (+0.6% YoY) | 198 | 254 | 354 | 42 | 53.5% | 2.2 |
| Oak Lawn | $309,815 (+1.6% YoY) | 173 | 264 | 425 | 59 | 36.2% | 3.8 |
| Skokie | $449,731 (+5.0% YoY) | 165 | 242 | 349 | 42 | 44.2% | 3.1 |
| Des Plaines | $374,776 (+1.2% YoY) | 163 | 231 | 341 | 47 | 47.9% | 2.9 |
| Hoffman Estates | $410,005 (+1.9% YoY) | 152 | 225 | 303 | 43 | 52.8% | 2.8 |
| Streamwood | $329,803 (-1.6% YoY) | 148 | 166 | 254 | 45 | 53.6% | 2.2 |
| Glenview | $811,015 (+20.6% YoY) | 148 | 184 | 270 | 35 | 55.0% | 2.2 |
| Mount Prospect | $465,721 (+8.1% YoY) | 140 | 207 | 281 | 45 | 53.4% | 2.9 |
| Northbrook | $677,844 (-3.1% YoY) | 133 | 196 | 290 | 44 | 52.4% | 3.0 |
| Park Ridge | $651,860 (+16.4% YoY) | 131 | 176 | 248 | 45 | 43.1% | 2.5 |
| Wilmette | $1,279,234 (+6.2% YoY) | 118 | 151 | 209 | 35 | 61.9% | 1.8 |
| Berwyn | $374,776 (-3.4% YoY) | 110 | 135 | 242 | 60 | 47.8% | 3.3 |
| Elk Grove Village | $375,775 (-2.0% YoY) | 108 | 136 | 186 | 41 | 50.6% | 2.2 |
| Wheeling | $299,821 (-7.7% YoY) | 96 | 116 | 195 | 58 | 38.4% | 2.9 |
| Lansing | $199,880 (-4.8% YoY) | 89 | 141 | 250 | 61 | 39.2% | 5.2 |
| Oak Forest | $317,310 (+6.7% YoY) | 88 | 106 | 164 | 53 | 46.6% | 2.6 |
| Elmwood Park | $370,778 (+5.2% YoY) | 87 | 109 | 171 | 51 | 41.3% | 2.6 |
| South Holland | $215,871 (-1.9% YoY) | 86 | 93 | 218 | 94 | 32.2% | 3.9 |
| Calumet City | $169,399 (-1.4% YoY) | 85 | 117 | 301 | 100 | 43.5% | 6.5 |
| Niles | $435,989 (+26.4% YoY) | 84 | 106 | 165 | 50 | 45.2% | 2.4 |
| Morton Grove | $474,716 (+10.4% YoY) | 83 | 108 | 161 | 46 | 38.4% | 2.6 |
| Park Forest | $165,901 (+12.9% YoY) | 73 | 113 | 242 | 77 | 35.3% | 6.6 |
| Homewood | $247,202 (+6.6% YoY) | 71 | 116 | 219 | 67 | 27.6% | 5.1 |
| Palos Hills | $304,818 (+14.5% YoY) | 67 | 89 | 148 | 52 | 38.5% | 3.4 |
| Rolling Meadows | $359,785 (+6.6% YoY) | 66 | 105 | 146 | 42 | 50.1% | 3.4 |
| Cicero | $332,301 (+7.2% YoY) | 66 | 97 | 185 | 61 | 39.2% | 4.9 |
| Burbank | $311,813 (-2.6% YoY) | 63 | 87 | 148 | 53 | 42.7% | 3.8 |
| Westchester | $393,764 (+5.0% YoY) | 61 | 82 | 116 | 40 | 66.8% | 2.3 |
| Dolton | $149,910 (-11.8% YoY) | 61 | 91 | 218 | 94 | 36.8% | 6.7 |
| Forest Park | $346,293 (-8.3% YoY) | 61 | 77 | 128 | 43 | 45.1% | 3.2 |
| Western Springs | $1,080,403 (+18.1% YoY) | 61 | 80 | 109 | 38 | 53.5% | 2.1 |
| River Forest | $669,599 (+1.1% YoY) | 59 | 56 | 93 | 43 | 41.5% | 1.4 |
| Chicago Heights | $192,885 (+2.1% YoY) | 57 | 93 | 182 | 73 | 46.5% | 5.3 |
| Prospect Heights | $351,290 (+5.5% YoY) | 57 | 71 | 102 | 52 | 41.2% | 2.3 |
| Palos Heights | $329,803 (-9.6% YoY) | 56 | 72 | 108 | 47 | 32.8% | 2.6 |
| Evergreen Park | $330,802 (+10.3% YoY) | 55 | 75 | 118 | 64 | 53.8% | 3.0 |
| Brookfield | $394,764 (+3.6% YoY) | 54 | 73 | 102 | 39 | 56.7% | 2.6 |
| Matteson | $259,844 (+8.3% YoY) | 54 | 72 | 150 | 88 | 24.6% | 4.8 |
| La Grange | $587,149 (+6.8% YoY) | 53 | 76 | 106 | 45 | 63.6% | 2.8 |
| Winnetka | $1,878,876 (+10.5% YoY) | 53 | 58 | 86 | 30 | 61.7% | 1.2 |
| Country Club Hills | $237,808 (+24.5% YoY) | 53 | 103 | 190 | 63 | 38.5% | 6.3 |
| Barrington | $594,644 (+0.2% YoY) | 51 | 77 | 106 | 45 | 26.1% | 2.9 |
| Markham | $154,907 (-6.1% YoY) | 50 | 80 | 156 | 77 | 49.1% | 5.9 |
This article has been generated, in whole or in part, using generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology, with input from Redfin head of economic research Chen Zhao. While efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy and reliability of this information, you should independently verify all data, facts, and citations contained in this article before relying on it for any purpose. This information is not a substitute for advice from a real estate agent, financial advisor, or other licensed professional. County-level data is not seasonally adjusted. Check the Redfin Data Center for additional in-depth housing market data.
I was an early adopter of AI for the least glamorous reason imaginable.
It was 2021, and I was going through a divorce and had a pile of paperwork and a very expensive attorney. AI turned out to be a gift from above. I discovered an Apple app, Typing Mind, and learned about API keys to access multiple AI providers — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Perplexity, OpenRouter — through a single frontend.
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To the uninitiated, like me, it was transformational. Where before I had felt powerless and uninformed, now I felt more informed and a little confident, too. The AIs were helpful and full of suggestions for my attorneys (which they hate by the way). I began to have some hope.
But I soon learned that AIs are like “that friend”: You know the one who’s super helpful, always hyping you up, super confident but gets their information from YouTube or Reddit. Well-intentioned but prone to text you at 10 p.m. with political conspiracy theory videos they saw on Facebook.
You love them. They mean well, but …
AI models are fast, helpful and eager to please. They are also too friendly, too confident and more than willing to invent details when the real answer isn’t in their data. In plain English, they will lie with the confidence of a 3-year-old to keep you happy and make you think they’re smart
I learned to prompt the models to cite sources and provide links. The more I used them, the more I learned how to use them. And the more I used them, the more I learned I couldn’t trust them.
It’s the defining feature of the technology, and real estate agents need to understand it before they build a business around it.
Once you start testing models side by side, the pattern shows up quickly. One model sounds more polished. Another sounds more analytical. Another sounds warmer. But the behavior is consistent across the board. They are designed to be helpful and engaging.
That’s great when you are drafting an email to a past client, but less great when you are making decisions about a property, a loan, a contingency or whether that crack in the foundation is “cosmetic” or structural.
A model will tell you “this seems like a fair price” with complete confidence, but it doesn’t know that the comps it’s using are six months stale or that the comparable sale it’s referencing closed 12 percent below asking because the foundation was failing. The model doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. It just sounds like it does.
Real estate is where AI gets interesting because the industry runs on information, timing and interpretation. That makes it a natural place to use AI and a dangerous place to use it lazily.
The National Association of Realtors 2025 Technology Survey found that 68 percent of agents now use AI tools in their business, yet only 20 percent use them daily. That gap isn’t about access. It’s about trust. Agents are experimenting, but they haven’t integrated AI into their workflow.
Agents are already using AI for listing copy, social media, email follow-up, market research and client education. Consumers are already using it to compare homes, summarize neighborhood data and ask questions they used to ask a human first. Vendors are already selling AI as though it is a shortcut to intelligence.
It’s just a shortcut, and that’s why verification is the new core skill.
The real estate industry has always loved the promise of a shortcut. A better lead source. A smarter CRM. A predictive pricing tool. A dashboard that will somehow replace discipline, judgment and follow-through.
AI slots into that dream because it sounds like the next upgrade. It is faster, cheaper, writes better and has no problem doing all the things agents and assistants hate doing, so of course, vendors are pitching it like a panacea.
That is why so many vendors are selling AI the way they used to sell “synergy” and “blockchain.” They know the average user will not check the work. They know most people are too busy, too trusting or too relieved that the machine wrote the email for them.
But in real estate, convenience without verification is just a fast way to get into trouble.
The smartest people I know are not treating AI like a magic wand. They are treating it like a junior assistant who works very fast and occasionally tells lies with eye contact.
That means the output gets reviewed. The facts get checked. The assumptions get tested. The final word stays human.
This is where real estate becomes the perfect case study for AI trust. The industry already depends on translation. We take complex facts and turn them into usable advice. We explain contracts, financing, market behavior and why the seller’s “firm” price is negotiable when the home has been on the market for more than 30 days.
That makes AI useful, but it also makes it risky. Because we are in a business where a shortcut can cost a client tens of thousands of dollars, confidence is not enough. We need verification.
Ultimately, AI can be a timesaver and a great starting point, and for those who understand that simple fact, AI is a great tool. However, it is not the final answer.
That distinction matters because consumers are being told that AI can help them write listing descriptions, summarize market trends, answer pricing questions and explain contract language. Some of that is true.
Some of it is useful. But useful is not the same thing as trustworthy, especially when the thing being discussed is governed by a regulatory framework that gets very tetchy when it catches people being lazy.
The winning agents in the next cycle will not be the ones who adopt AI fastest. They will be the ones who learn to verify AI output fastest. They will be the ones who treat the model as a starting point, not a final answer.
Rising incomes and stock market gains have created more luxury buyers; however, the Agency’s inaugural mid-year report reveals supply lags behind.
The affordability crunch has reached the luxury market, according to The Agency’s inaugural Red Paper Mid-Year Report. The report, which dives into six major trends from the Gen-X and Millennial wealth transfer to the impact of artificial intelligence, contextualizes proprietary and third-party sales data with insights from The Agency’s global network of agents.
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Mauricio Umansky | The Agency
“We are seeing some of the most consequential shifts in buyer behavior and market dynamics in recent memory,” said Mauricio Umansky, CEO and founder of The Agency, in a prepared statement. “This report gives our clients and agents a precise, real-time examination on where the market stands and, more importantly, where it is headed.”
The report revealed that the share of homebuyers with upper-middle-class incomes has risen 210 percent since 1979, going from 10 percent to 31 percent of the U.S. adult population. That — matched with a 142 percent increase in home equity since 2020 and three years of record stock market gains — has increased the number of homebuyers who can afford entry-level luxury homes priced between $1 million and $5 million.
However, inventory levels don’t match demand, creating hyper-competitive landscapes in key luxury markets, including Anchorage, Alaska; Bend, Oregon; Dallas; Marblehead, Massachusetts; and Hilton Head, South Carolina.
Some U.S. homebuyers are looking to foreign locales to stretch their buck, with the report highlighting Canada and Spain as starter-level hotspots.
“Inventory in Canada is the opposite of the U.S., with more luxury homes available now than in 2019,” The Agency Managing Partner Steve Bailey said of the firm’s Waterloo, Brantford, Oakville, Muskoka, Toronto West, York, Niagara, and Halifax regions. “In Canada, our mortgages have terms of five years, so even if you have a 25-year loan, you need to renew it every five years.”
“We’re seeing a more balanced market now, with at least six months of inventory in the C$1 million to C$3 million price range (US$731,000 to US$2.2 million),” he added.
Meanwhile, in Spain, Madrid offers a 40 to 60 percent discount on comparable properties in other European hubs, like London and Paris. However, U.S. homebuyers interested in Madrid should act sooner rather than later, as a surge in demand is pushing prices up.
“Our luxury threshold used to be €800,000 to €1 million (about US$935,000 to US$1.17 million), but now luxury costs €3 million (about US$3.5 million),” The Agency Madrid Managing Partner Patricio Guzman said. “We’ve seen a big influx of investors from Venezuela, Mexico, and Colombia in the past few years, which rapidly pushed up prices.”
The Agency President Rainy Hake Austin said the report reflects how quickly the market has changed since January, and the need to proactively adjust to those changes.
“The Agency has built its reputation on staying ahead of the market, and this mid-year report is a direct extension of that commitment,” she said. “It gives our agents the intelligence they need to guide their clients with confidence through the rest of 2026 and beyond.”
When the market slows down, joining a real estate team can start to feel like the obvious answer.
Leads are harder to come by. Buyers are cautious. Sellers are harder to price. Deals take longer. Then an agent looks around and thinks, “Maybe I just need to join a team, and everything will get easier.“
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Sometimes that is the right move.
But sometimes it is just a panic decision dressed up as a business strategy.
Joining a team can be a great way to get support, structure, mentorship and more opportunities. It can also be a great way to lose time, give up margin and tie your business to someone else’s goals without realizing it until you are already deep in their systems.
Before you join a real estate team, ask these five questions.
Before you ask the team leader anything, ask yourself this first: What do I actually want my real estate business to look like in five years?
If your goal is to become a strong solo agent, the team you join should help you build skills, systems and confidence that eventually allow you to stand on your own. If your goal is to start your own team someday, look for a team where you can learn leadership, operations, lead generation and business math from the inside.
But if your goal is to stay on a team long term and focus mainly on sales, that is a different decision. You may want strong support, consistent lead flow, clear accountability and a structure where you can plug in and perform.
None of these goals are wrong.
The problem is joining a team before you know which one applies to you. It’s hard to choose the right team when you have not defined what you want the team to help you build.
Once you know your goals, you need to understand theirs.
Ask the team leader what the long-term plan is. Are they growing? Are they staying the same size? Are they shifting markets? Are they moving into listings, expansion, coaching, recruiting or something else?
I once heard from an agent who joined a team and loved it for the first six months. The systems were solid, the people were good, and she was finally getting into a rhythm. Then the team leader announced they were retiring and disbanding the team in a few months.
That is a brutal surprise.
She had spent months learning their systems, adjusting her business, and building around a team structure that was about to disappear. That question should have been asked much earlier.
If the team leader’s future does not match the future you are trying to build, you need to know before you join.
A lot of agents join teams because they hear the team is high-producing. That sounds great, but it does not tell you much.
You need to know what kind of business they actually do.
Are they buyer-heavy? Seller-heavy? Investor-focused? New construction-heavy? Relocation-based? Luxury? First-time buyers? Geographic farm? Paid leads? Referral-based?
This matters because you need to know where you fit.
If the team is built around listings and you have never worked with sellers, that may be a great learning opportunity, or it may be a brutal learning curve, depending on the support they provide.
If the team is buyer-heavy and you hate running around showing homes nights and weekends, that might not be the right fit.
You also need to ask about the people side. Will you fit with the team culture? Will you fit with how they communicate? Will you fit with how they distribute leads, handle accountability and manage expectations?
A team is not just a lead source. It is an operating environment. Make sure it is one you can actually succeed in.
This question tells you a lot if you listen carefully.
Ask the team leader what they track, what they care about and what they are trying to improve inside the business. If all they talk about is GCI, volume, units, awards and rankings, pay attention.
Those numbers are not automatically bad, but they are often vanity metrics. They tell you the business looks busy. They do not always tell you the business is healthy.
A better team leader should be able to talk about profitability, net commission, cost per closing, lead conversion, agent retention, client experience, repeat business and how many deals it takes to break even.
That is the kind of person you can learn from.
If your long-term goal is to build a real business, do you want to learn from someone who understands business math or someone who just knows how to look successful online?
The way a team leader talks about their business will tell you a lot about what you are actually joining.
This sounds simple, but agents miss it all the time.
Do not assume that because a team is in your MLS, most of their business is in the city or area you expect. Teams can operate across large markets, and their actual lead flow may be concentrated somewhere very different from where you want to work.
I learned this one personally.
We had a really good team member leave because we never had a clear enough conversation about where most of our listings were. That mattered because our listing leads came from that area. She assumed the business was concentrated closer to where she wanted to work, but it was farther than she expected, and the drive eventually became too much.
That was avoidable.
Ask where most of the team’s buyers and sellers are. Ask where the listing leads come from. Ask how far agents are expected to drive. Geography affects your time, your energy, your profitability and your ability to serve clients well.
Joining a real estate team can be a smart move, but it is not automatically the fix for a slow market.
Sometimes the better answer is to stay solo, buckle down, learn new skills, improve your lead generation and build a stronger business. Other times, a team can give you the mentorship, structure and opportunity you need to grow faster.
Do not join a team just because the market is hard. Join one because it fits your goals, aligns with the team leader’s direction, matches the kind of business you want to build and gives you the opportunity to learn from someone who understands more than vanity metrics.
The right team can accelerate your career. The wrong team can delay it.
In June, Inman goes deep on real estate teams: what it takes to join one, how to build a team worth joining, and yes, when it’s time to leave. During Teams Month, we’ll be drawing on the best team leaders in the country to bring you the insights, frameworks and hard-won lessons that don’t usually make it into the highlight reel.
Josh Ries is a real estate broker and a lead generation consultant. You can connect with him on TikTok and Instagram.
Wendy Forsythe has spent decades in real estate leadership roles, building a reputation as an industry veteran and a visible voice in the brokerage world.
Now, after serving two years as chief marketing officer of eXp Realty and helping lead a brand transformation, Forsythe has been promoted to chief operating officer of the cloud-based brokerage. She is also one of the real estate leaders tapped to join Inman’s new advisory council.
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Forsythe spoke with Inman about her new role, eXp’s evolving operations, the role of AI in brokerage support and what she hopes to see from Inman’s next chapter.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Inman: You were recently promoted from CMO to COO at eXp Realty. What were some of the initiatives from your time leading marketing that you were most proud of?
Forsythe: Since I’ve joined eXp, we completely took the brand through what we called a brand glow-up. The look and feel and how the eXp brand shows up in the marketplace, we modernized in every way — from the colors, logo, design and aesthetic to the messaging of the brand and how we talk about the brand.
That has been really important because we needed the energy of the brand to match the energy of the stakeholders in the brand. When you think of our agents, who are high-performing professional entrepreneurs out there in the marketplace, those two things need to align. To bring the brand and our agents’ energy into alignment has been something I’ve been hugely proud of.
We’ve also brought some great products in terms of increasing our value proposition to the agent. Canva is one. We were the first to introduce Canva at an enterprise level to the platform and add that to our value stack for our agents. That was a huge initiative.
I’ll never forget when we rolled Canva out to the agents. We did it at our big event, eXpcon, and that was like an Oprah moment on stage, saying, “You’re all going to get Canva at no additional cost.” Almost 6,000 people in that audience went crazy because they were already Canva users.
eXp Realty has roughly 83,000 agents, and it is also now integrating NextHome. What are some of your goals in the COO role, and what does “agent-obsessed operations” look like at that scale?
If we talk just from the eXp Realty perspective, which is where I am hyper-focused, we have always been the most agent-centric brokerage on the planet. That is our North Star.
We are at such an inflection point right now with AI and the opportunity that it gives us to really be AI-forward in how we operate a brokerage business. We closed 343,000 transactions last year as a brokerage. You can imagine the volume of work that is for an operations team to get every single agent involved in every one of those transactions paid every single day. We do that in a matter of minutes, and that is our commitment.
To be AI-forward yet people-centric is at the core of our operations commitment. For me, stepping into the role of COO is to help bring that vision to the next level, because we have this inflection point of reimagining what that looks like using AI in brokerage operations. It has given us a whole new world to think about what best practices look like, because tomorrow and today are not what yesterday was in our business.
The nature of competition in brokerage has changed so much. It is not just tech stack or agent tools anymore. There are also questions around transparency, control over listings, consumer interests and broader industry principles. What is your industry thesis right now?
My ethos is that we are at a pivotal moment in the industry, and all of us in leadership need to anchor on transparency and what is right for the consumer. If we anchor our decisions on that, we’ll navigate through the various decisions that need to be made in the right way to get to the right place.
We are all running businesses. We are all responsible to our shareholders. We are responsible to the stakeholders in our businesses, and we should be competitive. We need to be competitive. That’s what business is. But you can be competitive and still anchor on doing the right thing for the consumer. That is how we compete every single day, and that is how we want our agents to show up and compete every single day.
We will continue to do that in a very compelling way and in a way that will continue to see eXp grow in market share, grow in agent count and grow in all of the KPIs that are important for our business to grow in.
Shortly after the NAR settlement, eXp introduced forms and made them available for others in the industry to use. From an operations perspective, do you expect eXp to continue down that same path around forms, plain language and open-sourcing resources when it makes sense?
If it anchors in, “It’s the right thing to do for the consumers, it’s the right thing to do for the business,” we’ll always anchor in that first as we make our business decisions. We’ll make the right decisions around that for the business, and then we’ll compete to go out there and compete for business from there.
Holly [Mabery] is at the legislative meetings with NAR this week representing us. We have such a strong leadership team. When we talk about the overall value proposition of a business, the leadership element of that is one of the things that you can’t copy and paste. It is one of the things that I am most proud of as being part of the leadership team here at eXp. Leo [Pareja] and Holly and myself and Carrie Lysenko and Seth Siegler and, obviously, Glenn Sanford — we are just a team of practitioners who are out there every day living and breathing this industry.
I think our customers, our agents, respect that. I was on a call with an agent today, and he told me they respect that we have sold real estate, that we have dealt with forms, that we have been on committees, that we’ve walked the walk.
Pivoting to the Inman Advisory Council — how did that come together, and why did you decide to join?
Inman is in a new chapter with Tom [Bohn] stepping in as the new CEO. I was excited to welcome Tom into the role. I have been part of the Inman community for literally decades. Inman has been an important part of my career. I value the community so much. I value the place the community has in the industry.
When Tom’s announcement was made, I reached out to him right away to welcome him and introduce myself to him. That led to a conversation where he shared some of his thoughts and his goals. Being himself an outsider to the industry, one of the things he shared was that he wanted to put together this group of industry people that he could use as a sounding board and rely on to give him input, and to give the Inman leadership input, as they were imagining and crafting this next chapter for Inman.
He wanted people who were outspoken enough to give real opinions, because that is what we need as leaders. We need real feedback to help guide and craft decisions that we make. I was honored when he asked if I would participate, and I’m excited to be part of it and see this evolution of what the next chapter of Inman becomes.
The first advisory council meeting will be at Inman Connect San Diego. What are some ideas you would like to present? What would you like to see Inman cover more, or what conversations should the industry be having right now?
There is always a perspective about diversity in voices and getting as many different voices as possible as part of the conversation. I think there is an opportunity for that. Of course, you have to balance bringing the news to the industry, and the news is often made by a select few of those voices. But there are a lot of amazing stories out there that I think could balance that out.
In what we run, we are running stories all the time about our agents, so we try to find that same balance. I think that would be one of the things I would encourage: diversity in storytelling, not just from the headlines of industry news, but a different type of storytelling about what is happening in this industry from the ground level and the field level.
It does feel like we often hear from industry leaders and corporate voices, but at the end of the day agents are licensed professionals, independent contractors and the people carrying risk in the field. Is there anything else you would want to add about the industry, your new role or what agents need right now?
It is a time of change in the industry, and for agents, working in a stable environment has never been more important. In my new role and here at eXp, that is one of the things that we work toward every single day: providing that stability for them.
They know they can count on their brokers to be there to answer questions for them when they need us. They can count on getting paid quickly when those commission checks come. They can count on us to be there working for them on these important issues that are happening out in the industry.
That is more important than ever before. That is what I’m excited about: I get to represent all of our agents every single day.
SERHANT. is launching across four Texas markets simultaneously Tuesday, bringing 13 founding agents and six independent brokerages with nearly $1.5 billion in combined sales volume to the firm as it enters its 17th state.
SERHANT. is launching operations across four Texas markets simultaneously Tuesday, bringing 13 founding agents and six independent brokerages to the firm as it enters its 17th state.
The agents and brokerages joining at launch have collectively closed nearly $1.5 billion in combined sales volume over the past 12 months. The Texas expansion — spanning Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio — follows the firm’s entrance into California earlier this year and extends a national footprint the company has been building since its 2020 founding in New York.
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Susana Sarvis will lead Texas operations as managing director and broker of record. A Houston native with more than 17 years in the industry, Sarvis previously held leadership roles at Real Brokerage, Compass and John Daugherty, Realtors.
Susana Sarvis | Houston Managing Director & Broker | SERHANT.
“After spending more than 17 years helping agents grow their businesses and navigate an evolving industry, I couldn’t be more excited to join SERHANT. and lead our Texas expansion,” Sarvis said in a statement. “Texas is home to some of the most dynamic luxury markets in the country, and I look forward to helping our agents elevate their businesses while delivering exceptional experiences for buyers and sellers across the state.”
The firm said the six brokerage agreements are not acquisitions; each independently chose to align with SERHANT. for access to its proprietary AI platform, S.MPLE, and its media infrastructure. Those brokerages include Truss Real Estate in Houston, led by Chris Phan; Evoke Realty in San Antonio, led by David Garcia Jr. and Alanna D’Antonio Garcia; MRA Realtors in Dallas, led by Robert Alvarez Jr. and Lisa Martin; KF Real Estate in Austin, led by Kasey Fagan; and Steele Portfolio Real Estate in Austin, led by Ellen Steele, who will operate as The Ausperity Group at SERHANT.
CitiQuest Properties, a Houston-based brokerage founded in 2008 and specializing in new construction and development, is also joining. Burbridge has spent 22 years in real estate, closing nearly $150 million in sales over the past 12 months and surpassing $2 billion in career volume.
Founding agents work in various markets. In Houston: Eric and Erika Nelson of Nelson Co., Nicole Lopez of Marlowe Group and Michael Bass of Bass Client Collective. In Austin: Arion and Nicole Crenshaw of Crenshaw Residential Group and Dustin Weiss of The Weiss Group. In Dallas: Matt Keeton, Aaron Shockey of Aaron Shockey Group and Michael Petersen of Petersen Real Estate Group.
SERHANT. reported $7.1 billion in sales volume in 2025 and said it has grown more than 100 percent year over year. The firm now operates in 17 states with more than 2,000 agents.
Email Jessi Healey