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As the real estate industry charts a course beyond the choppy waters of 2023, its top producers are hoping for a year of collaboration, social media innovation and enhanced coaching to guide agents through lingering economic hurdles.
In a panel entitled “What Top Agents Want to See More of in 2024 and Beyond,” Official agent Ariana Gaffoglio, team leader Jason Mitchell of the Jason Mitchell Group and Compass agent Holly Meyer Lucas shared the green shoots they hoped to see sprout as economic challenges dissipate in the months ahead.
For Gaffoglio, a former member of The Eklund | Gomes Team at Douglas Elliman with career sales in excess of $1 billion, the emergence of co-listings in her California and Nevada markets offered a glimmer of hope that agents would work more collaboratively in the new year in the face of scant inventory.
“I am primarily a listing agent, and what I’ve noticed is it’s all the same agents going up against each other and instead of just competing, we’ve just decided to co-list with a different brokerage,” Gaffoglio said, recalling a two-year period of agents competing tooth-and-nail for a limited number of listings. “I’d like to see more of that — agents working together.”
Lucas, who works in Palm Beach, Florida, said she hopes to see more agents marketing themselves on social media rather than just using social platforms to advertise their properties. With class-action lawsuits challenging the very heart of the real estate business model, now is a more important time to show the human side of real estate agents, she argued.
“Agents separating their marketing of their listings and their personal brand marketing and really leaning into developing a strong personal brand and really polishing who they are as a real estate agent,” Lucas said. “I think it’s really important for consumers to see that with all the lawsuit stuff that’s been happening. Consumers seeing who we are and what are personal brands are, I think every top agent should be really leaning into that.”
Whereas agents once leveraged their marketing of listings to market themselves, the game for self-promotion has changed dramatically in recent years with the emergence of real estate influencers.
“There’s a real estate influencer community that has emerged and they’re doing such a good job of really polishing their personal brand and displaying to the public who they are,” she said. “Doubling down on that is super important.”
Mitchell, whose company claims to be the largest B2B brokerage in America, said he hoped 2024 would provide more concrete approaches for teams and brokerages to help agents develop their business.
“It’s not just the same song and dance,” he said. “It’s not just, ‘Hey, we give you coaching’ or ‘Hey, we give you technology. It’s ‘Hey, we’re going to give you a platform with which you can actually grow your book of business.’
“And it’s hard to do, but it’s also thinking outside of the box and thinking outside of the general scope of what being a team leader or a broker-owner is,” he added. “It’s finding ways to enhance people’s ability to transact.”
