After a brief opening question on leadership philosophy, the conversation dives into Anywhere’s focus on luxury real estate.
Ryan Schneider: If you think about our strategic strengths and focus, our luxury businesses is right at the top. We invest disproportionately in luxury markets. We love our businesses that cut across brands like Sotheby’s International Realty. The fact that we were able to outperform the market substantially throughout 2024 was an awesome thing.
When you can find something where you can drive meaningful above-market growth, it’s totally worth pushing on.
Tracey Velt: You were strategically focused on M&A, and a lot of people dropped out of the big M&A in the past several years. They really focused on more local acquisitions or mergers. Are you looking at that as a possibility as one of your levers of growth moving forward?
Schneider: We went through this cycle where M&A was less attractive economically. As I talked about on my last earnings call, I think M&A is going to be back here. 2025 is going to be a big year for M&A and we’re here to do good deals.
They have to make sense, economically. We’re not going to do deals just to do them.
Next, the conversation transitions into a discussion on Anywhere’s usage of artificial intelligence (AI).
Velt: How are these innovations changing the way Anywhere operates? And, tell me a little bit about your investment in AI and technology moving forward.
Schneider: We’re delivering our business with about 8,000 employees. A lot of that’s because we’ve been able to digitize and automate a lot of how we do our business. But, this generative AI opportunity is huge. We’re seeing it both in customer-facing products that we can give to our agents and franchisees to make them more successful or more efficient.
To end the conversation, Schneider discusses key lessons he learned in his life and career before taking over as the leader of one of real estate’s largest companies.
Velt: You had a journey toward leading one of the world’s largest real estate companies, which didn’t happen overnight. Looking back, what were some of your defining experiences?
Schneider: I come from outside the industry, and I’ve been in the industry for about seven years now. It was just about making the leap into this exciting industry that I want to work in. At the end of the day, there is a real opportunity in this industry to continually reinvent how things happen.
