Keep your eye on your own performance instead of constantly comparing yourself to others, coach Darryl Davis writes. You’ll grow faster and enjoy the journey more.
Let us talk about a habit that quietly drains more real estate careers than any market shift ever has: comparing yourself to other agents.
- The record-breaker on your team.
- The name on every sign in the neighborhood.
- The peer whose social feed looks like one long, unbroken winning streak.
If watching them leaves you feeling smaller, this one is for you.
Why comparison actually slows you down
Picture a swimmer in the middle of a race who keeps turning their head to watch the lane beside them. Every glance sideways breaks their form, drags their stroke and pulls them off their pace. That is precisely what comparison does to your business.
The energy you spend measuring yourself against another agent is energy you are not spending on your own clients, your own pipeline, your own next phone call. You literally swim slower in your own race because you will not keep your eyes in your own lane.
And it compounds. Every minute you spend studying someone else’s success is a minute stolen from building your own, which means the comparison doesn’t just feel lousy. It actively widens the very gap you are agonizing over.
The agent who stays locked in on their own work tends to pull ahead of the one who keeps score on everybody else, not because they have more talent, but because every ounce of their energy is pointed forward instead of sideways.
The number tells you less than you think
It is tempting to treat another agent’s production as proof that they are better and you are behind. But a bigger number is a remarkably poor scoreboard for your worth. Before you hand it that much power over how you feel, remember everything it conveniently leaves out:
- It does not show the cost. That volume may have come at the price of missed dinners, frayed relationships or a level of burnout you would never willingly trade for.
- It does not show the season. You may be comparing your slow stretch to someone else’s peak, two completely different points on two completely different journeys.
- It does not show the whole person. You are looking at a highlight reel, not the behind-the-scenes, and the gap between the two is almost always enormous. Remember this: People only show you what they want you to see. They don’t show you their losses or struggles.
- It does not show what is coming. Today’s leader can be tomorrow’s afterthought, and today’s quiet grinder can be next year’s breakout. A single snapshot predicts nothing about the trajectory.
None of that shows up in the headline number, and yet that headline number is the very thing you have been letting define how you feel about your career. That is a bad trade, and the good news is that you can stop making it today.
Run your own race
The fix is not to try harder at the comparison game. It is to quit the game entirely and get back into your own lane. Turn the questions inward.
- What am I genuinely good at?
- Who have I helped this year that I am proud of?
- What kind of career am I actually trying to build, and for whom?
A seller you served beautifully never once checked your ranking against the top producer. They felt how you treated them, and that is the metric that quietly pays you back in referrals for years.
Here is the freeing part, and I want you to really take it in: You do not have to be the biggest name in the market to be exactly the right professional for the next family who needs you. Your value was never tied to your place on a leaderboard, and the day you stop checking that leaderboard is the day you start swimming your fastest.
Try this as a practical reset:
- Mute the accounts that make you feel behind, even just for a season.
- Replace that scrolling time with a single productive action: one more check-in call, one more note to a past client.
Comparison is passive, and it drains you. Action is active, and it fills you back up. You cannot feel envious and engaged at the same moment, so keep choosing engaged, and let the leaderboard run without you.
Keep your eyes in your own lane, and you will swim faster, serve better and actually enjoy the race. Keep watching everyone else’s, and you will exhaust yourself chasing a finish line that was never yours to begin with.
Darryl Davis, CSP, is a nationally recognized real estate speaker, bestselling author and coach with more than 40 years in the industry. Learn more at darrylspeaks.com.
Every Friday, we round up the most popular, most read, most critical stories of the week to give you a quick catchup on the big headlines you might have missed in the hustle and bustle of the workweek. Here’s this week’s Top 5 as chosen by our readers.
P.S. Don’t miss The Download, our weekly column that breaks down one of the week’s top stories and equips you with what you’ll need to meet next Monday head-on.
Compass Florida is facing a proposed class action lawsuit in Palm Beach County over a $475 transaction fee that homebuyers say was improperly added.
Inman does not work for the biggest brokerages, the loudest portal or whoever is writing the largest check this quarter. We work for the agents and brokers.
No shortcuts. No complicated funnels. Jimmy Burgess shares your no-fuss guide to becoming the most visible, valuable and trusted person in a specific area.
REMAX president Chris Lim joins the ARA board as the agent-first trade group lands its first major franchise partner and offers free first-year memberships to all U.S. REMAX agents.
Troy Palmquist talks to Philippe Wellens, co-founder and CEO at Kleio, about what AI access to listings means for agents and their clients.
Realtor.com’s June housing market trends report showed asking prices falling at a record pace and pending sales climbing for a seventh consecutive month, as sellers priced realistically and buyers responded.
June’s housing data had something for everyone: Asking prices fell at a record pace, and days-on-market finally stopped growing.
Home asking prices fell 2.5 percent year over year in June to a national median of $430,000, the steepest annual decline in Realtor.com’s data history, which dates to 2017, and the eighth consecutive month of decreases. At the same time, the median home spent 53 days on market, flat year over year, ending a 26-month streak of homes taking longer to sell than the prior year, according to the platform’s June housing market trends report released Wednesday.
The drop translated to a meaningful affordability shift for buyers. A homebuyer who purchased a $430,000 home in June with a 20 percent down payment at the average mortgage rate of 6.49 percent owed a typical monthly payment of $2,172, roughly $132 less per month than a year ago, when the median price was $440,950 and rates averaged 6.82 percent, according to the report.
Pending sales rose 3.7 percent year over year, the seventh consecutive month of growth and a streak last seen between January and July 2021, the report said. At the same time, the share of listings with a price cut fell 1.9 percentage points to 18.8 percent, consistent with sellers pricing more realistically at the outset, according to the report.
New listings rose 2.4 percent year over year to 463,480, led by the Northeast at 12.6 percent. Active inventory reached 1,102,615, up 1.9 percent from a year ago. Delistings — or homes pulled from the market without a sale — fell nearly 10 percent year over year and sat at roughly 5 percent of all active listings, near their lowest share since last year’s surge, according to the report.
Regionally, list prices fell most in the West, down 4 percent year over year, followed by the South at 2.5 percent and the Northeast at 1 percent. The Midwest held flat. At the metro level, median list price per square foot declined in 33 of the 50 largest metros. Austin saw the steepest drop at 8.2 percent, followed by Memphis at 6 percent and Buffalo at 5.2 percent. Providence posted the largest gain at 8.7 percent, followed by Indianapolis at 4.9 percent and New York at 3.4 percent.
Four years after the national median list price peaked at $449,000 in June 2022, prices are down 7.3 percent in the West and 3.5 percent in the South, but up 10 percent in the Midwest and 12.6 percent in the Northeast, according to the report.
MRED MLS previously asked the court to compel arbitration. Zillow disagrees and wants to head to a hearing on Wednesday.
As Zillow and Chicago’s multiple listing service head toward the first major legal showdown in a case that could determine the future of real estate marketing, the two groups are arguing over whether they should first try to find a settlement outside court.
MRED MLS, the Chicago-based MLS that has become a central player in the struggle over private listings, asked a federal judge this week to send the parties to arbitration.
Zillow sued MRED and Compass in May. At issue was what Zillow described as an illegal conspiracy that targets the portal’s policy requiring listings to be distributed via the MLS and accessible to all members — including the real estate search portals — without first being marketed off-MLS.
Zillow said in its lawsuit that Compass and MRED had worked together to at least threaten to take away Zillow’s access to the listings that power its business.
Zillow briefly lost access to listings throughout Chicagoland and beyond, as MRED said Zillow violated MLS rules by blocking a handful of Compass listings that had been marketed off-MLS.
Zillow quickly won a temporary restraining order that restored access to MRED listings while the parties continued toward a trial. The parties are scheduled to participate in a hearing this week, during which they will further argue over Zillow’s continued access to listings.
The MLS, which recently expanded to accept members anywhere in the nation, has said the court should deny Zillow’s request for a preliminary injunction, meaning the portal would lose access to listings.
Now, the MLS has asked the court to force the parties into arbitration, which could lead to a settlement.
MRED first asked for arbitration in May. Zillow disagreed in a filing Friday, and MRED subsequently reiterated its preference for arbitration in a filing on Monday.
MRED said that its rules already require participants to attempt arbitration before heading to court.
“After compelling arbitration, the Court should decline to address the preliminary injunction motion and should stay all non-arbitrable claims,” MRED wrote in a filing on Monday.
The preliminary injunction hearing is set to start in a federal courtroom in Chicago on Wednesday.
Most agents blame the ad first.
The leads are too expensive. The clicks are bad. The platform does not work anymore. The market changed.
Sometimes that is true, but a lot of the time, the ad is not the biggest problem. The landing page is.
I have seen agents spend real money driving traffic to pages that were never built to convert. The ad gets the click, but the page creates confusion, friction or too many escape routes. Then the agent blames the campaign instead of looking at the part of the system where the lead actually makes a decision.
7 tips to improve your landing page
A good landing page does not need to be fancy. It needs to be clear, fast, relevant and built around the action you want the lead to take.
1. Treat the landing page differently from your website
A website is built for browsing. A landing page is built for conversion.
When someone clicks on a real estate ad, they clicked because something specific caught their attention. Maybe it was homes in a certain price range, a neighborhood, new construction, acreage or homes under a certain payment range.
The landing page needs to continue that exact conversation. If your ad says homes under $400,000, the page should not send them to a generic home search. Confused people usually do not convert.
2. Force registration early
For property search campaigns, I am a big believer in forcing registration early. That usually means forcing sign up from the first property view or from any other click on a call to action.
Some agents hate this because they want people to browse freely. I understand the instinct, but paid traffic is different. You are paying for the click. If the visitor looks around, leaves and never registers, you lose the lead and the data.
That data matters because platforms need conversion signals to optimize. The goal is not friction. The goal is measurable action.
3. Use a grid layout for listings
Layout matters more than agents think.
In my experience, grid layouts tend to outperform list or map style layouts for property landing pages. A grid lets the lead see multiple options at once. That matters because real estate search is emotional and visual.
People want to feel like there are enough choices to justify staying on the page. If the page feels empty, narrow or hard to scan, they leave.
4. Show homes around the market average
The price range matters too.
Showing properties around the market’s average sales price, with a reasonable range on both sides, usually keeps the page relevant to a larger pool of leads.
If the page is too expensive, you lose people who feel priced out. If it is too cheap, you may attract people who are not a fit for the campaign.
This is where agents can accidentally sabotage their ads. They build a page around what they want to sell instead of what the market is most likely to respond to.
5. Make sure there are enough properties to show
Inventory depth matters.
If your landing page only shows a few homes, the lead may assume there are not enough available for them. I like to see at least 20 properties whenever possible so the page feels alive and worth exploring.
If the search is too narrow, the page may feel dead on arrival. That can hurt sign-up rates because the visitor does not believe the page has enough value to justify giving you their information.
The lead needs to feel like there is something worth unlocking.
6. Match your keywords and ad copy to the page
Your landing page should not feel disconnected from your ad.
The language needs to flow from campaign to page. If the ad uses certain keywords, neighborhoods, property types or buyer intent language, that should be reflected on the landing page too.
This reassures the consumer they landed in the right place. It also helps campaign performance because relevance matters. When the ad, keywords and landing page all tell the same story, the experience is cleaner.
The lead should never click an ad and wonder, wait, why am I here?
7. Improve speed and give people more than one action
Slow pages kill campaigns. People are impatient, especially on mobile. If your landing page takes too long to load, the lead may leave before they ever see the offer.
Speed matters, but so does the action you offer once the page loads. Not every lead is ready for the same next step. Some are ready to book a showing. Some want property details. Some want market information. Some want to save a search.
That is why landing pages should include both direct and indirect calls to action.
A direct call to action might be book a showing, request a call or schedule a tour. An indirect call to action might be get market info, see similar homes, request the full list or get updates when new homes hit the market.
Better pages make better campaigns
A paid ad campaign is not just an ad. It is a system.
The ad creates attention. The landing page creates action. The follow-up creates conversion.
When the landing page is weak, the whole system becomes more expensive. Cost per click may look fine, but cost per lead goes up. Lead quality gets harder to judge. Follow-up becomes messier because the intent is unclear.
If the campaign is not producing, audit the page before you blame the platform. It may not need a bigger budget. It may need a better landing page.
For a long time, the path from buyer curiosity to listing page ran through the same handful of portals. You optimized for Zillow, you fed the IDX, you paid for placement.
The infrastructure was stable enough that most agents never had to think about it. That infrastructure is starting to move. A French real estate network just restructured its entire listing catalog so AI systems can read, reason and recommend from it directly — no portal required. Could other places, including the U.S., be next?
AI is rewriting how buyers find listings
A French real estate network just made its entire property catalog natively readable by AI systems, including ChatGPT, Google AI Overview and Claude, and the move points to a shift in how buyer discovery works that U.S. agents should be watching.
Orpi, which operates 1,250 real estate agencies in France, partnered with agentic AI platform Kleio to restructure its listing data so large language models can reason across both structured fields and narrative property descriptions, Inman contributor Troy Palmquist wrote. Rather than publishing listings on websites and portals, the system is built for AI agents to interpret user intent and recommend properties conversationally.
“We are redistributing the game,” Kleio co-founder and CEO Philippe Wellens told Palmquist, “because for the last 20 years [buyers] had to go through aggregators.” Wellens attributed Europe’s less regulated market structure, with no centralized MLS and more brokerage control over listing data, as a factor that made the deployment more viable there than in the U.S.
What this means for real estate professionals: The question worth asking now is whether your listing data, including descriptions, fields and narrative detail, is rich enough to be useful to an AI system making recommendations. If AI search becomes where buyer intent forms, the listings that read well to a language model may have an edge over those optimized only for portal keyword filters.
Instagram carousels now support per-slide captions
Instagram rolled out per-slide captions for carousel posts on June 18, giving creators a way to add unique text to each of up to 20 slides, Digital Trends reported.
The feature works through a toggle in the caption area when creating a new carousel post. Followers see each caption appear beneath its corresponding slide as they swipe. The update also carries an accessibility benefit: Users who rely on screen readers get the same narrative flow as sighted users, rather than a single caption describing the whole post.
What this means for real estate professionals: Carousel posts are already one of the most effective formats for real estate content, and per-slide captions make them more useful. Each slide can now carry its own context, whether that is a price point, a room description or a neighborhood detail, without cramming everything into one caption or leaving slides unlabeled. For listing carousels, open house recaps or neighborhood guides, this is worth testing.
LinkedIn is testing collaborative posts
LinkedIn announced it is testing a feature that allows multiple members and pages to share a single post together, with all collaborators listed at the top, according to a post from LinkedIn Guide to Creating.
The company said it began testing the feature with a small group of creators and brands at Cannes and plans a broader rollout over the coming months. The announcement cited use cases including product launches, brand partnerships and milestone celebrations as examples of where the format fits.
What this means for real estate professionals: Co-listed properties, broker-agent partnerships and brokerage-brand collaborations are a natural fit for this format once it rolls out broadly. A collaborative post would let both parties share the content to their respective audiences without requiring each person to post separately, which expands reach without duplicating effort. Worth watching as LinkedIn moves toward wider availability.
Meta is moving toward AI-driven content review
Meta plans to have AI handle 90 percent of its content and ad review by the end of 2026, up from 50 percent today, the Financial Times reported, as cited by Social Media Today.
The accelerated timeline comes despite a recent incident in which hackers accessed more than 20,000 Instagram accounts by prompting Meta’s AI support bot to send account verification codes to email addresses they controlled.
Meta said it has since addressed the vulnerability, but the incident underscored a structural challenge with AI-powered systems: because users can phrase requests in an almost infinite number of ways, blocking all potential misuse is not straightforward, Social Media Today noted.
What this means for real estate professionals: If you run paid ads on Facebook or Instagram, the shift toward AI-driven content review will affect how your ads are approved, flagged or rejected, and appeals processes may become less human in the process. Real estate advertising is already one of the more closely scrutinized categories on Meta’s platforms due to Fair Housing rules. Agents should document their ad content and monitor approval patterns as AI takes on more of that review load.
Social media is now the leading daily news source
More people now rely on social platforms for daily news than on television or news websites, according to the Reuters Institute 2026 Digital News Report, which surveyed more than 85,000 respondents across 48 regions.
The report found TikTok and Instagram are growing in news influence while X is declining, with Threads gaining traction as an alternative following changes under Elon Musk’s ownership.
Online creators are also rising as news sources across multiple regions, the report found, though the Reuters Institute noted creators are often motivated by engagement rather than accuracy. AI chatbots are growing as news sources as well, raising concerns about misinformation given the rate of factually incorrect responses.
What this means for real estate professionals: Your clients are forming opinions about the housing market based on what surfaces in their social feeds, not what they read on news sites or watch on TV. That makes your own social presence more important as a source of accurate, locally grounded information. Agents who show up consistently with factual market context have an opportunity to be the credible voice their followers turn to, especially as algorithm-driven content and AI-generated summaries fill more of the information gap.
TL;DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read)
- A French real estate network restructured its listings for AI systems like ChatGPT and Claude, signaling a shift in how buyers may discover properties.
- Instagram now supports per-slide captions on carousels, giving each slide its own text.
- LinkedIn is testing collaborative posts that list all contributing members and pages at the top.
- Meta plans AI-driven review for 90 percent of content and ads by end of 2026, affecting how real estate ads get approved.
- Social media has overtaken TV and news websites as the leading daily news source, per the Reuters Institute.
The portal era did not end overnight, and it is not ending overnight now. But the signals are accumulating. Buyers are getting news from social feeds instead of news sites. Content is being reviewed by machines instead of people. Listings are being restructured for AI instead of search algorithms. The agents who come out ahead will be the ones who understood the shift while it was still early enough to matter.
Each week on Trending, Inman’s Jessi Healey dives into what’s buzzing in social media and why it matters for real estate professionals. From viral trends to platform changes, she’ll break it all down so you know what’s worth your time — and what’s not.
A California agent created three fake offers to keep a luxury listing from expiring. Troy Palmquist and Summer Goralik look at how the scheme unraveled in their latest True Crimes of Real Estate episode.
Sometimes the biggest ethical violations don’t start with greed, or even intent. They start with fear.
When a newly licensed agent fabricated three buyer offers in an effort to keep her listing from expiring, she didn’t mean any harm. She just wanted to keep the listing. It was about to expire, and she needed to buy herself more time, pinning her hopes on an extension to the listing agreement.
Find out more about the $3 million luxury listing and the fake multiple-offer scenario in this week’s “True Crimes of Real Estate” podcast above, and learn why pressure, desperation and the panic from losing a listing are never enough to justify crossing ethical lines.
Here are some of the most important takeaways:
Technology left a trail
Agents often underestimate how much forensic evidence exists inside modern transaction systems. In this case, the newbie agent’s scheme was exposed through transaction management records and document audit histories.
An audit history shows when a document was created, who created it, who sent it for signatures, when it was signed and who signed it. The supervising agent in this transaction saw that all of the documents and signatures were coming through the agent’s ZipForms account, helping to unravel the scheme.
Sellers did their own due diligence
Consumers are more clued in than ever, and in this week’s case, the sellers became angry, then suspicious and, eventually, uncovered the fraud by contacting the brokers listed on the offers directly. They went back to the paperwork, called a broker on the phone, and found out the broker knew nothing about the listing at all.
Real estate transactions run on trust, so the moment a client senses something just doesn’t add up, they’ll start looking for answers themselves. Consistent transparency and honest communication aren’t just professional obligations — they’re the foundation of every successful client relationship.
Consequences and damage didn’t stop at a failed sale
In this case, both the broker who knew nothing about the fraudulent activity and the agent who did experienced significant consequences. The sellers sued the brokerage, which ultimately paid a significant settlement to resolve the dispute. The agent admitted wrongdoing, and the judge revoked her license.
Even when a brokerage isn’t found liable by regulators, fraud within a transaction can create significant legal, financial and reputational exposure. Because the agent’s violation strikes directly at both her trustworthiness and that of the brokerage, the damage goes beyond a revoked license or a legal settlement, eroding consumer confidence in everyone associated with the transaction.
The irony, of course, is that the agent’s actions accomplished the exact opposite of what she intended: In trying to save the listing, she lost her career. Once the fabricated offers were discovered, the fallout extended far beyond a failed transaction, serving as a reminder that short-term fixes often carry long-term consequences, especially when they’re built on deception.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. The discussion is based primarily on laws, regulations, and regulatory guidance applicable in the State of California, including those enforced by the California Department of Real Estate. Laws and regulatory interpretations vary by jurisdiction, and readers should consult with qualified legal counsel or their broker regarding how these issues may apply to their specific situation or in other states.
Troy Palmquist is the founder and principal at HomeCode Advisors. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Summer Goralik is a real estate compliance consultant and former CA DRE Investigator in Huntington Beach, California. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
Sue Yannaccone stepped into one of the biggest operational jobs in residential real estate this spring, becoming the first Chief Operating Officer of Compass International Holdings after Compass closed its acquisition of Anywhere.
In the role, Yannaccone is charged with helping scale technology, agent services, and learning and development across a combined company that has said its network includes roughly 340,000 real estate professionals in about 120 countries and territories. The Compass International Holdings family of brands includes Compass, Coldwell Banker, Corcoran, Sotheby’s International Realty, Century 21, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, ERA and others.
Yannaccone, who previously led Anywhere Brands and Anywhere Advisors and is also one of the real estate leaders tapped to join Inman’s new advisory council, spoke in our interview about integration, agent support, consumer choice and the industry conversations she believes deserve more attention.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Inman: This is our first time reconnecting in your new role. From a high level, how are you thinking about your mandate as COO of Compass International Holdings?
Yannaccone: I look at my role as ensuring that we are taking the strengths of both of these organizations and really integrating them to ensure we are leveraging the best of both to drive the greatest value to our real estate professionals and our franchisees, our affiliate networks.
It is about looking across these two businesses that have come together and, with my unique perspective, having come in from a house of brands at Anywhere and close to 30 years in this industry, asking, “How do I ensure that we are delivering at our highest capacity to deliver that value and connecting the dots down to our ultimate consumer or end user, which is our real estate professional?”
You have a lot of moving pieces and components. Is your focus similar to what it was before, or is it even more complex now?
Yannaccone: It’s bigger from a number of brands and employee population [perspective], but it is looking at: What are we ultimately looking to accomplish? Where does the enterprise need to go? How do we get there in a structured way by leveraging truly the best of both?
How do we ensure that our brands retain their uniqueness and the special place that they’ve all earned in the industry, that we are serving our company-owned brokerage and empowering those real estate professionals, and then learning from that?
We’ve said forever, one of the benefits of an enterprise like this is [that] running a brokerage while also running a franchise gives us the ability to take learnings and to share that information and ultimately deliver things that are valuable to help our agents and our brokers grow their business.
It is a unique perspective coming in, but also ensuring we’re retaining and evolving the entrepreneurial spirit that comes with Compass as a brokerage, and informing that into how we move with speed and scale efficiently and effectively.
What does successful integration look like, especially when you have so many moving parts and brokerages that could be competing with each other but are now part of the same corporate parent?
Yannaccone: I think success continues to look like all of our real estate professionals having the tools and the systems that they need to support their growth.
One of the things that we had done in my prior world, and which I’m bringing forward here, is [to determine] where we need to streamline the back office operation. We don’t need multiple teams doing multiple things. We need the best teams doing the behind-the-scenes work and then being hyper-focused on the individualism for our agents so that they can have a differentiated voice in the marketplace, and being very protective of that.
Coming from my background, we’ve been able to do that successfully for decades, and now it’s ensuring that we continue to take those learnings. For example, do I need five different teams doing back office transaction processing? No, I need one amazing team doing that type of stuff, so that I continue to invest in those things that bring that unique, differentiated value to our customers.
Shifting to the Inman Advisory Council, how was that pitched to you, and why did you decide to participate?
Yannaccone: It was pitched to me as an opportunity to engage in a dialogue about the go-forward vision and opportunity for Inman to deliver value to their customers and to the industry at large.
I look at it as an exceedingly important time in our industry with a lot of change, and I have always felt that the best things come from diverse voices around a table. If we truly want to participate in the enhancement of something or the furthering of topics for the better good, a diverse group of people in a room talking about it can be exceedingly helpful, just to add different perspectives.
Media is changing, too. From your perspective, what would you like to see come from the advisory council? What are some useful things Inman could do for the industry?
Yannaccone: I think it’s important that any media outlet, as you mentioned, is changing. Similar to how I approach my job, which is a lot of listening, understanding, keeping my finger on the pulse of what my stakeholders need from me, are interested in and truly want to hear, I think the same thing is very true for any outlet and any group in a business.
That’s why this council is really interesting to me, because it’s saying, “Hey, we want to have an open dialogue to understand what matters.” That is a key thread in how I lead.
In terms of trade media and the conversations happening in the industry, what are some topics you are interested in right now or feel the industry should be focusing on more?
Yannaccone: I think there are probably two things I would focus on.
One is really homing in on the role of the real estate professional in the transaction and who their fiduciary responsibility is to as they’re working with a homeseller, and ensuring that we are continuing to focus on their role as a trusted advisor within that transaction.
That means working with a seller to discuss the best way to market their home, the unique nature of the home, the moment in time, what the seller is looking to accomplish and how to keep them at the center of the transaction.
The other topic plays off of that somewhat, which is this concept of consumer choice. I’ve been advocating for consumer choice for years. It is the idea that a consumer should have the ability to determine, along with their trusted advisor, the best way to market the home for them, and that includes a myriad of ways. It’s not one size fits all.
You have had a front-row seat to these big industry conversations, including the Clear Cooperation debate. When you say you have advocated for consumer choice for years, has there been an evolution there? What is your perspective going from the original Clear Cooperation debate to where we are now?
Yannaccone: I think that I would frame it as this: I have always felt that a consumer should have a right to choose how they market their home, whether you want to put it broadly, whether you want to price test, whether you want to do a different marketing strategy.
That is something that has not changed in my perspective of opportunity for a home seller. I think what’s evolving in the industry now is the way in which we can advocate for that and accomplish that within the industry right now.
But telling a consumer how they must, what they must — I think the industry, any industry, is never well-served by one-size-fits-all guidelines and demands. I think it’s just unrealistic.
So, therefore, for me, it’s really not a change. It’s more of an approach, but it is focused on [the idea] that consumer choice has always been forefront.
Is there anything else you want to share about your career arc, your new role, Compass International Holdings or the state of the industry?
Yannaccone: It is a big moment in our industry. There’s a lot going on, and I am most excited right now about the opportunity to truly channel everything we’re bringing together at Compass International Holdings to fuel the growth of our real estate professionals, our franchisees and affiliates.
That is the ultimate role that I have, to bring all of this together in order to support them growing their individual businesses in whatever way makes sense for them and helping them leverage that.
Really, my job is to take all this in, to listen, to understand what’s going on, to look at the landscape and then say: How do I distill that down to true value for the people that choose to be with one of our myriad brands? That is a choice, and we are delivering on our promise to them to help them grow their business.
From an outside perspective, it seems like there is a fairly unified message across a large agent pool. Is that fair to say, or is that something executives are working to do?
Yannaccone: I would say from the executive level all the way down, this is a culture of ensuring that we’re listening to our agents and delivering on their needs to ensure they’re successful.
The legacy Anywhere brands are very used to being in this larger ecosystem, and ultimately, these are individuals who sit across from the table with each other every single day, no matter what brand they’re in, to transact their business.
Helping them understand that we continue to support their unique brand that they’ve chosen to be a part of, to make their career at, while adding additional tools and resources through leveraging the home platform across all of our ecosystem, giving them what they need to succeed, feels like a good message for us to be delivering and them to be receiving.
Every Friday, we round up the most popular, most read, most critical stories of the week to give you a quick catchup on the big headlines you might have missed in the hustle and bustle of the workweek. Here’s this week’s Top 5 as chosen by our readers.
P.S. Don’t miss The Download, our weekly column that breaks down one of the week’s top stories and equips you with what you’ll need to meet next Monday head-on.
The National Association of Realtors has asked the American Real Estate Association to hand over documents relating to the NAR Accountability Project — and ARA is saying “no.”
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.
On Tuesday, Congress passed its most significant response to the housing shortage in 36 years, but whether President Trump will sign it remains unclear.
Take a peek inside Kansas City real estate agent Rachel Kilmer’s relationship marketing playbook that helped grow her business and referrals. The greatest growth opportunity comes from reaching out and celebrating people, Jimmy Burgess writes.
The deal represents a different kind of vertical integration than the industry has recently seen — one that moves laterally into homeownership itself rather than deeper into the transaction.
Kelman has joined the firm as executive in residence, a leadership advisory role that allows him to work with Greylock’s portfolio of companies and leaders.
Five months after stepping down from Redfin, Glenn Kelman has started his next chapter as venture capital firm Greylock Partners’ executive in residence.
Glenn Kelman | Credit: Redfin
“We are thrilled to share that Glenn Kelman has joined Greylock as an Executive in Residence,” the company’s announcement read. “Glenn is an exceptional operator and company builder with nearly three decades of experience building, scaling and leading technology companies through IPOs and beyond. At Greylock, he’ll work directly with founders on leadership development, company building, go-to-market, and the hard parts of scaling that don’t fit neatly into a board deck.”
Kelman’s career spans 31 years, starting as a product manager at Stanford Technology Group. In 1997, Kelman co-founded the portal software company Plumtree, alongside Kirill Sheynkman and Joe McVeigh. The company went public in 2002 and was then acquired by BEA in 2005.
After the acquisition, Kelman joined Redfin, where he served as president and CEO for a little over 20 years.
Under Kelman’s guidance, Redfin grew exponentially, transforming from a small Seattle-based startup to a major firm with an innovative model centered on low listing fees and a hybrid compensation plan for its agents that combines high-split commissions with traditional W-2 benefits, such as healthcare and 401(k) vesting.
Redfin also made its mark in the portal world, becoming one of the most popular home search sites for homebuyers and sellers in the U.S.
Redfin’s growth drew the attention of Rocket Companies, which acquired the company in June 2025 through a $1.75 billion all-stock deal. With Redfin, Rocket Companies became a full-service national real estate company, offering a platform for consumers to view homes, pair with an agent, qualify for a mortgage and have their home loan serviced in one place.
“Rocket believes in technology, and Rocket believes in service,” Kelman said in a January LinkedIn post announcing his departure. “There aren’t many companies that believe in that dual commitment.”
“I want to try finding another mission-driven enterprise outside of real estate,” he added. “I’m grateful that Rocket has turned out to be such a good owner of Redfin, and that Varun has been such a kind leader.”
Greylock said Kelman’s profound business knowledge and long-term relationship with firm partner James Slavet, who was an early investor and board member at Redfin, will be invaluable to the founders and teams Kelman will work with.
“[Slavet] played a formative role in Glenn’s development as a leader. That relationship reinforced the trust and partnership that define the best founder-CEOs,” the announcement read. “That experience is at the heart of what Glenn brings to Greylock. We know from working as go-to partners to entrepreneurs that building a great product is only part of the journey.”
“The personal growth required to lead a company through every stage of scaling matters just as much,” it added. “Glenn’s combination of operational depth, intellectual honesty and genuine care for the people around him will be invaluable to our founders and teams.”