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As major industry players continue to consolidate during what has become a challenging period for real estate, franchisor Anywhere Real Estate Inc. has hired Steve Capezza as senior vice president and head of growth and M&A, Inman has learned.
Capezza will work in his new role to grow Anywhere through acquisitions and mergers across opportunities that span brokerage, title and transaction services. He will report to Sue Yannaccone, president and CEO of Anywhere Brands and Anywhere Advisors.
Sue Yannaccone | Anywhere
“Steve is, in my opinion, a perfect fit for our growth strategy … across the entirety of our enterprise,” Yannaccone told Inman.
“He brings that experience with a wide range of companies in the industry running brokerage [and] tech, so there’s a real opportunity for us to leverage his insights, his knowledge, in a different way. I’m always focused on bringing new talent into our organization that can bring unique perspectives and insights from touching other parts of our business. So he has that in-depth understanding of the ecosystem of our industry, and being able to partner with me and the rest of our enterprise on defining that next chapter of growth for us, those insights, I think, are invaluable.”
Other major industry players, including Rocket and Redfin, and Compass and @properties Christie’s International Real Estate have recently entered into their own significant acquisition deals, in a sign of the greater industry movement.
Yannaccone has told Inman recently that she sees consolidation as a trend that will continue in the industry for the foreseeable future, and as something that Anywhere is always open to. With Capezza’s hire, the company will be able to lean more heavily into potential opportunities.
Steve Capezza | Anywhere
“The industry is in sort of a unique opportunity-rich time for acquisition across the entire landscape of our industry, and we felt that now is the time — as we focus on our next chapter of growth, and we are a growing company — how do we ensure that we are rightly positioned to lean in and take advantage of that growth opportunity that we see happening in the industry?” Yannaccone said. “We’ve said we believe consolidation is likely — we’ve seen some, not a ton — and we’re in a strong position to benefit from that across all of the pieces of the real estate space because Anywhere is uniquely positioned, given our scale already and the fact that we are in all facets of the real estate business.”
For the past several months, Capezza has been doing consulting work in the wake of leaving his role as Side’s president last fall after the company conducted a restructuring in the midst of debuting a new profit-sharing program. Prior to that, he was in various leadership roles at Zillow and Trulia for about 10 years.
Anywhere’s people and mission-driven strategy were two big draws to the company for Capezza.
“I believe the opportunities in our category are going to be solved through a consortium of forward-thinking companies, and Anywhere is just that,” Capezza told Inman. “Anywhere’s mission centers on bringing the industry forward, and from Ryan Schneider on down, including the person I’m reporting to, Sue, we are very much excited about leading the evolution of this industry.”
Capezza clarified that he has never led M&A efforts at the organizations he has worked at before, but has been a member of diligence teams that evaluate those types of transactions and was looking forward to the opportunity to lead the charge at Anywhere.
The current economic uncertainty adds a “wrinkle” for Anywhere to consider as it thinks about future deals, Capezza said, but the company’s approach to such transactions will largely be the same as it would be in a growth real estate market.
“We have a company strategy that centers on our mission, and our growth and M&A strategy is going to ladder up to that,” Capezza said. “And folks that we end up partnering with in any sort of M&A activity will be very strategic. It will be strategic for us, it will be strategic for them. We are excited to bring into our fold organizations that we can invest in and drive to their next growth curve. But we will be very, very methodical, and the macro certainly makes that approach that much more important.”
