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Luxury brokerage Douglas Elliman has had a busy few months.
Since President and CEO Michael S. Liebowitz took the helm from Howard Lorber in October, the exec has been working to improve finances by decreasing losses and focusing on some of the firm’s strengths, like its new development pipeline.
Liebowitz has also responded to luxury consumer demand by announcing the brokerage’s forthcoming private listings platform, Elliman Black Label Private Listings, and launching operations globally with Elliman International.
Next month, Liebowitz will also join a roster of elite industry players onstage at Inman Connect San Diego. In advance of the event, Inman caught up with the CEO to hear more about what Elliman is up to now, and what he’s looking forward to in San Diego. Here’s what he had to say, edited for brevity and clarity.
Inman: It seems like Elliman has been busy with a lot of projects lately. I wanted to start by getting an update on what’s happening with Elliman International, since it was recently announced. What are you excited about and what’s the current focus with the new initiative?
Michael Liebowitz: We think that our brand has worldwide scalability. Our prior deal [with Knight Frank] didn’t give us the ability to do that. So the fact that we’re in the high-end luxury market, the average person you know in that market has four or five, six homes, and they’re in places around the world.
The world is getting smaller, so to speak, and [so are] the barriers between countries. I know a lot of people who have homes in Europe and in South America and all that. So it’s just a natural progression for us as a company to build a worldwide network surrounding our name and our agents. It’ll bring a lot of inbound leads in to our agents in the U.S. It’ll create a revenue opportunity for us around the globe.
Yeah, that’s super exciting. And I wanted to touch too on just where we are with private listing networks today. I know you talked about this a little bit at our Miami event a couple of weeks ago. How do you feel about the state of private listing networks, and Zillow’s move to try and squash that?
It’s interesting. For me, that’s maybe a little bit different from our competitors. I’m new to the scene, you know. I don’t have any of the angst or bruises from battles that the industry, within itself, has had. So I look at it really from a very clear lens.
And on private listings, I look at it really clearly in the sense that I’m a big believer that the more people that look at something, the higher price you will typically get, right? I mean, there’s just no doubt about it. It’s like in the banking world — buyers never want a banker because they think the banker is going to raise the price on them and the deal will cost them more, right? Because there’s more people looking.
It’s no different than in this, right? If you know, 4,000 people see that your property is for sale [compared to] 40, you’re likely to get a better deal and create more competition. But I don’t want to ignore the fact that if consumers are saying that they would like some privacy in it, for whatever reason it may be — like I wanted privacy years ago because I didn’t want people traipsing through my house — I understand it. And when I mean understand it, I mean really understand it.
So I believe that Douglas Elliman is a business that is in the expertise business, and that’s where we want to be.
And you know, we’re doubling and tripling down on being the thought leader and the expertise leader, and training our agents and making sure that they’re the leaders in that. And that comes with everything that you do, education and disclosure. So you really need to have the conversation we’re having here. You meet a movie star or a very high-powered executive who says, “I really want privacy.” We’ll give you privacy. That’s no problem, but just please, really understand the process.
Yeah, gotcha — it’s about finding that balance.
Yeah, that’s why we’re really down the middle on this one. I think some of our competitors are using that as a way to accomplish other things, and maybe become Zillow or some of these other businesses. We are a traditional brokerage, right? That’s what we are; we’re not running away from that. We’re not trying to be something that’s different. We’re not trying to be Zillow.
We’re a traditional brokerage that has a lot of agents; we embrace our agents. We want to be an agent-centric business. And our competitors are trying, in my opinion, to take this issue — like some of our competitors are [saying], ‘Oh, we’re an urban business. We’re a technology business. Now we’re a private listing [business].’ It’s always another thing.
We’re a brokerage. That’s what we are, that’s what we want to be, that’s where we see our future.
Got it. But you guys are developing your own private listing network: Elliman Black Label Private Listings.
Yeah, it’s in addition to the other services that we provide because the clients are demanding it. That’s it — end of story.
I also wanted to follow up on something — a couple of months ago now, there were some rumors floating around about a potential Anywhere merger, or they maybe expressed an interest in buying Douglas Elliman. Just out of curiosity, do you have anything further to say about that?
Listen, the only comment I’ll make is that we don’t comment on rumors.
But the other comment that I would make is, we are not in talks with anybody about selling the company, and we love our business plan. I think that Douglas Elliman is actually in the best position as a company for the future. And we’re not looking to go and do acquisitions that are not accretive to us immediately.
So you’re not going to see us as a company buying more real estate brokerages unless they’re incredibly opportunistic. We have no plan to buy brokerages at the moment at all. I think we’re looking at it more as a strategic recruiting opportunity. So maybe it’s a smaller one or groups of agents domestically and internationally. We’re busy working on what I’ll call our infrastructure, our technology, making the company much more efficient and lean. It’s been successful so far.
We’re spending a lot of time with our existing agents. Retention is what’s important to us. We don’t spend any time recruiting — the recruiting that we do is when we hear somebody wants to leave somewhere, or if somebody calls us, obviously, we’ll get aggressive with them, because we want to bring in really quality agents. But we are not a recruiting model business like our competitors — we’re not aggregating and building the agents.
It’s no surprise that it’s been a slow market recently, and some agents are struggling right now. What kind of advice do you have for them to get through this period?
I actually did a round table two nights ago with a bunch of young professionals, and someone asked me the question of, ‘When do you think it’s time to leave a brokerage when you’re an agent?’ And I said to them, and it really kind of rang true for us, ‘The agents that we lost, were all not having a great year, and I think that agents leave a company because they get frustrated with their own business, and they think a change of scenery will shake up their environment, and it’ll give them more motivation.’
Now, listen, maybe that’s true. Maybe there’s some truth to that. I don’t really believe that. I think at the end of the day, it comes down to us all individually, and what we do is no different than us as a company.
I’m coming up with all these things to differentiate ourselves. And I think that the reality is it’s really important as an agent to focus on your own existing business and what you’re doing. Because I think that making moves just to make a move — you then go and you realize the walls may be a different color, but it’s the same business and it’s the same industry, and there’s not much of a difference between the companies.
It’s really the support you get at the company, the people who are at the company. That’s why for us, it’s really important to make sure that the right agents come in the door, and we’re not just going to hire anybody, which some of our competitors are doing. And I think that’s the one thing.
The last thing I wanted to ask you about was, since you’re going to be speaking at Inman Connect San Diego this year, is there anything in particular that you’re looking forward to at that event?
Listen, the one thing I like about those events is that I get to meet so many people. It’s like, I mentioned this round table that I did the other night, that I was really doing it as a favor. It was for this rabbi. It was at a young Jewish professionals thing in Miami, and he asked me to do — what I really thought I was doing, I’ll stick to the script of a rabbi — I thought I was doing a mitzvah for him. And you know what, I met so many young professional people that I gave my cell phone to a bunch of them, and it was great.
And I think that with the speaking engagements, I think a lot of people think it’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s like work.’ You gotta go to this and that. But it’s where I’ve met such amazing people. And everybody who goes to those is going there because they want to learn, they want to meet people. We’re all going kind of for the same reason.
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