Exclusive: Matt Consalvo is dying. His message is about living. 

Editor's note: Real Estate News spoke at length with Matt Consalvo, the longtime CEO of ARMLS, in mid-October. He shared candid thoughts about his ALS diagnosis, his perspective on life, and how the industry needs to change. This is part one of a two-part interview.

Matt Consalvo turned 60 in August. He doesn't expect to make it to 61.

Consalvo, CEO of Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service for 14 years, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — also known as Lou Gehrig's disease — on May 25. Though his brain is unaffected, the terminal disease is quickly killing the nerve cells that control basic functions such as walking, speaking, swallowing and breathing.

Consalvo took the helm at ARMLS in 2012. For years, his plan had been to retire in May 2027, but his unexpected diagnosis changed that. Jeff Bosch, former CEO of IRES MLS, took over as CEO at ARMLS on Oct. 26.

Real Estate News reached out to Consalvo after the Council of MLSs named its Hall of Fame after him earlier this month. He agreed to an interview on one condition: "I'm all in, as long as we don't avoid the elephant in the room," he said, referring to his diagnosis.

We spoke over Zoom on Oct. 15, while he wore a ventilator to help him breathe and his wife of 32 years, Nancy, helped him use his mouse. He can no longer use his hands or his legs.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What's your prognosis?

It is incurable. There are no treatments that are effective for me. Hospice is joining us this week, but that is just to make things more comfortable. I have to use a ventilator to breathe. The muscles around my lungs are no longer able to oxygenate my lungs, but the ventilator pushes air in and out. Not everyone takes to a ventilator well. I have, which means it could last months, it could last days, or it could last years.

It's a sobering experience to die in slow motion. You expect death to come on a random Tuesday with a half-done to-do list. You don't expect death to come in a slow motion progression where you get to dot the i's and cross the t's that you forgot to do up until this point in your life. My wife and I went on a cruise a couple weeks ago when I still had use of my hands and my legs, and just doing the things that we always said we'd do. But we've always done that. I had cancer at 47, and that's a wake-up call. I'm 60 now, so it's a wake-up call when those things happen early in life. 

I've always lived with great zeal and great zest. I just expected a different retirement than the one I'm going to get. That's part of life. We're going to celebrate every memory that we can, and that's what we're doing.

And that's what ARMLS is doing. My staff is fantastic. They're saddened, but it's also a great time for the organization to renew itself. No matter who the leader is, other leaders have different ideas. They have recipes that are different. They incubate ideas and choices differently, so I'm very encouraged to see what Jeff does with the team and what they innovate and come up with next. I want to stay around long enough to see what they cook up.

Do you think you'll make it to 61?

No, I don't. This is a hideous disease that just is unforgiving and takes things away every day, and that's just the reality of it.

[My wife and I] had a trip to Antarctica planned in early '27. That was our seventh continent to go see together, but unfortunately, that didn't happen. It won't happen. 

I've been very public about this. Everyone knows. I'm not hiding anything.

Why do you want people to know?

[Tearing up] We have one life, and life is precious, and the only thing that really matters at the end of the day is what we leave behind in the hearts and minds of others. And I want to give myself to those people who have invested in me for decades.

I don't get to vote on this, so I'm going to make the most of every day. And I want people to know that life is fragile. Take the trip, spend time with the kids. They're only young once. We've traveled the world and done all those things, but not all my friends have, and one of the things I've used with this diagnosis is to remind them that they're saving up for retirement, but retirement may not be what they want. It's not what I wanted. 

A bucket of money doesn't get you anything if you don't have health. So take the trip while you can walk the 10,000 steps. Go to the Great Wall of China and hike it for two hours, while you're able to, because life will sneak up on you. It will take that opportunity away from you in a blink of an eye.

I initially reached out to you thinking, 'Well, Matt is going to retire and he's going to be on a beach for a couple weeks, and then maybe he'll take on the projects he's been putting off, maybe he'll consult on the side.' When you told me about your diagnosis, that was not what I was expecting. How has this affected your perspective on the industry?

I probably thought of consulting, especially since I believe wholeheartedly that MLSs have to change their decision-making model and their governance. I believe all MLSs should be moving to the belief that Realtors and agents are great sounding boards, but they should not be our business leaders anymore. 

We need leaders who are not invested in commissions and brokerage squabbles. ARMLS is in the middle of that change. In August of this year, we moved to an independent board concept. It's only six members. Five of them are independent directors. One is from our shareholder advisory group, which can be an agent or a broker in town. At the end of this transition, we won't have competitors on the board. The very thing that some of our brokerages are leveling against MLSs — that the board of directors is manipulated against other competitive models — is not going to exist at ARMLS. 

MLSs have been a funny little business the entire time I've been around. Cooperation is the most fundamental thing, but the MLS also needs to evolve to deliver data, not just that 123 Main Street is for sale, but all the layers of data around the property. The consumer is more informed than ever, and our subscribers deserve to have the most curated set of data so they can use their expertise to interpret that data for consumers. 

That's my talking point. That would have been my mission post-retirement, to go out and help friends and neighbors understand that. But people will read this, and people have heard my voice, and they'll at least start the conversation. Unfortunately, I don't think as an industry we have the courage to give up the broker-agent decision-making model in the boardroom yet, but I think we need to.

You mentioned at the start of our conversation that there are many arrows going out in the industry. What did you mean by that?

We are a cooperative, and we have some folks in our community right now who are not being very cooperative. If you're part of a cooperative, you're expected to participate. It's a case of I'll bring things to the table, you bring things to the table, and together we'll make the best marketplace that we can. I'm not just talking about listings. I'm talking about great innovative ideas too. I'm talking about good policy for us going forward. I'm talking about conversations about what's best for the consumer, what's best for the transaction, what makes us healthy. We don't have everyone working together. 

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the CMLS event in Fort Lauderdale. I got to Florida, but my legs stopped working. I regret not being in Florida because we had a great gentleman that I have a ton of respect for in Robert Reffkin, the CEO of Compass, read a statement from the podium. It was very threatening. And threatening is not good for us. 

We are a community, but some of the arrows flying around make me feel like it's a zero-sum game to some people, and that's not healthy. I am tired of the legal manipulation of our industry, and it's frustrating because we're better than this.

When you say legal manipulation, could you elaborate on that?

Our industry has been attacked on multiple fronts, and it's gotten us to the point that we're hostile with each other, and then you have MLSs suing brokers and brokers suing MLSs, or at least saber rattling noisily. It is just an uncomfortable environment. We are better when we find a problem, roll up our sleeves and use all the great minds in the room to fix it. 

We're not better when we see a problem and we have nine different rooms because all these people are part of different factions. We just need the smartest of us to help us solve our problems, and we're never going to do that if we aren't friendly with each other. 

If we can't buy each other a cup of coffee and sit down and talk, we're never going to solve the big problems.

Stay tuned for part two of our interview with Matt Consalvo.

If you would like to support ALS research and advocacy, Matt asks that you considering donating to ALS Arizona.

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