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As the market contracts, one brokerage is setting stricter expectations for its new agents.
Lamacchia Realty, an indie brokerage with offices across New England and South Florida, has updated its Commitment to Success Agreement to better reflect more challenging market conditions, Chief Operating Officer Jackie Louh announced during the brokerage’s August companywide meeting.
The updated agreement is an attempt to deter new agents who take a more relaxed attitude toward the industry, the brokerage CEO Anthony Lamacchia said, an influx of which have taken up real estate since the pandemic.
Anthony Lamacchia | Photo credit: Lamacchia Realty
“In the last two years since Covid a lot of people with the attitude of ‘I want to try real estate’ have come into the business, across the industry across the company,” Broker-Owner Lamacchia said in an interview. “I don’t know if these people were lied to or what, but a lot of them think it’s easy and they think they don’t have to work hard.”
The brokerage’s new commitment to success will be an attempt to outline for newly licensed agents what is expected of them at the agency. Existing agents at the company who have joined within the past two years and have only had a few sales will also be required to sign, the company said in a news release.
“We’re going to people that have joined since 2020, if they have one sale or less we’re going to them too to say ‘hey, you’ve got to agree to this or you’ve got to move on,” Lamacchia said.
He said he expects the agreement will affect his agent count, but that he’s more concerned with attracting high-producing agents and deterring unserious ones.
“We’re not playing games, we want people who are serious about doing well in the real estate business,” he said. “And that’s going to decrease how many new agents we bring in but honestly, that’s on purpose. We only want the cream of the crop.”
The broker-owner said the past few years felt like a slip in standards compared to their previous recruiting practices.
“I look back at how strict we used to be with letting agents in, we used to be very strict and require a lot of things,” he said. “Once we hit Covid and it turned it into a Zoom world it just made it easier for people to join but figure out a way to be slackers — I don’t want slackers.”
Jackie Louh | Photo credit: Lamacchia Realty
With the housing market in a measurable slowdown that has seen sales droop, the brokerage has felt it necessary to shift strategies, Louh said.
“As the market turns the page into a new era, we too as a company are doing the same. We have to tighten our expectations of new agents who are joining us as the easy years of a market upswing are behind us,” Louh said in a statement. “Those that get in now need to be ready to work harder.”
