It’s been another dynamic year for real estate with topics like housing shortages, affordability challenges and the National Association of Realtors (NAR) settlement dominating conversations about the industry's future and the outlook for agents. Behind the scenes, our team has rallied around the mantra of staying focused on what we can control…and on creating – not just finding – opportunities to add value at every stage for all parties involved in the real estate transaction.

The value of time

According to a 2024 survey by financial planning firm Empower, Americans value their time at an average of $240 per hour. This means that, for many, the value of an hour of their time is nearly eight times higher than the average U.S. salary. According to Rebecca Rickert, head of communications at Empower, “Time is a precious commodity -- whether it's the way people value their hours to earn a living, or the price we pay to free up time in the here and now.” The latter has been a big focus for Anywhere this past year as we’ve worked to identify opportunities to give our brokers, agents, and consumers the gift of time.

Part of that involves cutting through noise…

The NAR settlement impacted the closing process in important ways that we’ve been interpreting and clarifying for our stakeholders. By arming our agents and brokers with the tools they need to implement required changes, we’re allowing them to stay focused on building their books of business… adding value in the form of time.

Earlier this year we recognized another opportunity to better enable our agents’ success, when we took a hard look at our own structure and processes. In March, we kicked off an initiative aimed at significantly streamlining our operations in support of our overarching goal to simplify the real estate transaction. We centralized all the paperwork and back-office processing tasks associated with the transactions we manage within our National Operations Center, enabling consistency and efficiency across our network, and, again, freeing up our agents’ time to concentrate on what they do best…the front-end work of building relationships with clients, and buying and selling homes.

The value of convenience

One of our agents said recently that our team has “made the entire transaction process more efficient than ever before, with clear communication across mortgage, title and other services my clients need.” Improving access to a broader spectrum of services is an opportunity to add value in 2025, no matter what industry you’re in.

A 2024 Gartner report found that companies are increasingly utilizing fewer service providers with more comprehensive offerings…a shift driven by a desire for simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and reliability. Our new team structure enables better visibility into each individual transaction and allows us to make helpful recommendations to our agents based on the needs of a particular consumer. At Anywhere, our scope of services allows a transaction to stay under our roof from contract to close…starting with relocating clients and moving all the way through the loan origination process, to our title and escrow servicing teams, to our underwriter, to our insurance agency. We move as one team, and our agents and consumers reap the benefits.

The value of opportunity

The concept of moving as one team was a pillar of the Anywhere strategy in 2024 and will continue to be a key component of our value proposition as we bring the power of our scale to every transaction we manage.

In 2023, we identified another way we could harness this power to add value for our network and the industry at large. In October that year, the Anywhere Government Affairs & Industry Relations team launched their first campaign on our Voter Voice platform, a tool to engage our employees, agents and affiliates in Advocacy Campaigns aimed at addressing issues that impact our industry.

Providing this channel has enhanced our value proposition by enabling our stakeholders to have a voice in shaping the future of real estate policy. In response to industry developments and events on the world stage, we’ve advocated for things like the critical role agents play in the home buying and selling process and the importance of title insurance to protecting homeowners and lenders during refinances.

Since we launched this platform, we’ve generated more than 1,600 partnerships with others in the industry joining our efforts and our employees and agents have submitted more than 5,000 messages to Congress.

Moving forward

Recent reports paint a promising picture for the coming year. Analysts are generally optimistic, with Fannie Mae and the Mortgage Bankers Association both projecting an increase in housing starts for 2025, and we saw what happened when the Fed cut interest rates by 50 basis points…volume surged, even refinance volume. Assuming the Fed continues to drop rates and inflation stabilizes, 2025 could shape up to be a year of growth for the real estate industry.

The bottom line is that no matter what happens in our industry or on the broader economic stage that’s out of our control, we should all be thinking about unique ways to add value for the people we serve.

About Don Casey

Don Casey is President and Chief Executive Officer of Anywhere Integrated Services and Relocation. He was appointed to this role in 2002, and the company has experienced tremendous growth throughout his tenure. Don is also a member of the board of directors of Guaranteed Rate Affinity, LLC.

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