Why the ‘brokerage for everybody’ strategy doesn’t work 

In a down market where every sale counts, many large brokerages have been directing a lot of resources toward recruiting in an effort to grow market share and boost agent count.

But HomeServices of America President and CEO Chris Kelly says that can be a mistake.

"When you try to be the brokerage for everybody, you're the brokerage for nobody," Kelly told the audience during a panel discussion at the 2026 T3 Leadership Summit. If a brokerage is always focused on bringing in new people, "you just start losing your identity — and what probably attracted people to you in the first place."

Kelly's fellow panelists — HomeSmart President Stacey Onnen and Lamacchia Realty Founder and CEO Anthony Lamacchia — noted that housing market conditions and career trajectories also influence brokerage model fit.

"There's so much room for everybody in this industry and every different model," Onnen said. "I may go through three different models in my career — and that may be 10 different brokerages."

Finding the right fit

Agents will thrive at a brokerage that understands and supports their goals, Kelly said. "If you want to be doing 12, 15, 20 transactions a year, you need to be with an environment that's doing that," he explained, while "a price-based model is probably going to be a better fit" for agents who only intend to close five or six annual transactions.

Recruiters must recognize that different agents have different priorities — and they need to incorporate those differences into their messaging, Lamacchia said.

"Meet the agent where they're at," Onnen agreed, "and stop assuming everybody wants to do 100 houses a year."

In defense of the part-time agent

As a former agent who was turned away from one brokerage early in her career because of her part-time status, Onnen believes it's important to "take a chance on the part-time or new" real estate professionals.

"Every single person that is a powerful real estate agent started as either brand-new or part-time," she said.

Besides, added Kelly, the industry's reputational risk likely isn't coming from part-timers. "I'm more worried about the reality show version of our industry dragging us down, as far as the public perception goes — not the part-time agent who's doing five or six transactions a year in a professional way."

An entry point for younger agents

Another reason to embrace part-time agents? Doing so could help bring a new generation into the industry. "How many folks are in their 20s and maybe even early 30s and just say, 'I'm going to quit my job, survive off savings for six months to nine months to a year until these transactions start pouring in'? There are very few people that can do that," Kelly observed.

"If we want to attract new people into this business, there has to be at least a transition-type period," he added.

What today's agents need

While brokerages used to be more active in running an agent's business, "the agents now need to remember that they truly have to run a full business top to bottom," Onnen said. Rather than hiding behind a big brand, agents are creating their own — and "that's huge," she added.

But agents are still looking for guidance in an industry that has been plagued by lawsuits over the past several years, according to Lamacchia.

"That does increase their want for leadership, their want for direction," he said. "If you play on that and you get involved in that, you will attract more people to your company."

More teams — and individual agents — coming

Five years from now, Kelly believes artificial intelligence will be "the equalizer" for agents as more use chatbots and other tools to tackle tasks like time-consuming paperwork.

"If you want to remain a single agent, you're not going to be at the disadvantage that you are today, or you were a couple years ago, compared to an agent who is surrounding themselves with other team members," he said.

And Onnen doesn't believe the teams trend is going away anytime soon. "I think that more and more agents want to be entrepreneurs who truly run their own business," she said. "They want to have their own brand, they want to have their own tools. So the brokerage needs to be more of a partner."

The best way for brokerages to help

If agents "don't think you care, then everything else is meaningless," Kelly said, adding that brokerages should always aim to make agents' work "a little simpler."

"My wording to our executive team is: We always need to be thinking about what we can do to put time back in the agent's day," Lamacchia said. "If you put time back in their day, the money will follow."

Editor's note: Real Estate News is an editorially independent division of T3 Sixty.