Real estate industry consolidation has been relentless. Mergers and acquisitions have reshaped the competitive landscape over the past five years, and, according to Danielle Garofalo, most brokerage leadership still lacks the infrastructure to navigate it.
Danielle Garofalo
That’s the premise behind RLTYconsulting, a new national consulting division launched Monday by RLTYco, the New York-based financial services company built specifically for real estate professionals.
Garofalo, who has served as chief strategy officer at Stribling & Associates and chief business development officer at CORE, will co-lead the division alongside Scott Elwell, a Douglas Elliman broker based in Greenwich, Connecticut.
The launch marks a significant expansion for RLTYco, which has primarily operated as a platform for 1099 agents, offering commission advances, tax prep, health insurance, and legal support under its RLTY Capital, RLTY Tax, RLTY Health, and RLTY Legal brands.
With RLTYconsulting, the company is moving into executive-level business development and brand strategy, targeting brokerages, boutique firms, and large teams looking to scale.
“For too long, top-tier agents and brokerages have been forced to choose between focusing on their brand or their bottom line, and it often feels like an unfortunate trade-off,” Garofalo said in a statement. “By partnering with RLTYco, we are giving leaders the freedom to double down on brand storytelling, identity and measurable growth while simplifying the burdensome back-end of running a real estate business.”
‘Not a temporary cycle’
Garofalo and Elwell are pitching the timing as deliberate. The consolidation wave — which has seen firms like Compass expand through acquisition and multiple regional brands fold into larger networks — isn’t letting up.
Scott Elwell
For boutique and independent firms without the balance sheet to compete at that scale, the pressure is real.
“I look at this as structural, not a temporary cycle,” Garofalo told Inman. “For boutique firms, this is a moment that proves why they’re valuable. AI is the great equalizer in technology — everyone has access to it. The difference comes down to structure. Firms that understand their performance drivers and their core strengths can lead. Firms that don’t find themselves reacting.”
Elwell, who has operated as both a real estate agent and a regional manager across New England, framed the opportunity in terms of real estate agent value rather than brokerage survival.
“There’s a great opportunity for individual agents to show their worth,” Elwell said. “I’m an agent at heart. When we’re talking about smaller companies and boutique brands, we’re also really talking about the value of the agents themselves. This is a perfect opportunity to showcase that.”
Garofalo said the ideal client for RLTYconsulting right now is leadership at independent brokerages, boutique brands, large firms and regional platforms.
“We can work directly with ownership and executive teams, but also with large teams,” she said. “Primarily, it’s people who are producing at a high level but recognize that the next phase requires more discipline — understanding performance, ownership planning, long-term durability. Those are our ideal clients.”
From Disney and IBM to real estate
Garofalo’s background is one of the differentiators RLTYco is selling. Before moving into real estate strategy, she held high-level marketing roles at Disney and IBM.
“I could talk about my Disney experience for hours,” she said. “But what I think about most is business structure.”
At Disney, Garofalo said she learned that brand integrity and operational precision are inseparable. Every decision and process is built to protect long-term value.
“At IBM, I got to see how organizations evolved through major technological change,” she said. “Leadership alignment, structural discipline — those aren’t abstract ideas there; they’re the foundation of how they scale.”
Real estate, she said, is entering a similar phase. The industry is more complex and institutional.
“My background trained me to think in that environment,” Garofalo said. “I’m applying institutional thinking to an industry that historically operated more informally.”
Firms onboarded with RLTYconsulting receive complimentary financial services through RLTYco as part of the partnership, with Garofalo’s team handling strategic roadmap and branding while RLTYco manages the back-end logistics.
Drawing on her experience at Stribling & Associates and at CORE, Garofalo will work with brokerage leadership on brand positioning, sales funnel development, market share growth and acquisition planning. The consulting arm also covers due diligence, general management strategy and operational efficiency.
‘They’re too busy performing to focus on expansion’
Garofalo’s existing in-house consulting client roster includes Mauricio Umansky of The Agency, Ricky Carruth and Jason Haber. She pointed to a pattern she said runs across high performers at that level.
“They’re so busy being really, really good at what they do that figuring out how to implement scale isn’t their focus — they’re too busy executing,” she said. “Ricky and Mauricio are two of the highest-performing people in the industry. They eat, sleep, and breathe what they do.
“But that’s true of most of my clients. Whether I’ve worked with Lennar, Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Compass or individual brands,” Garofalo continued. “Everyone at a high level has the same challenge: they’re too busy performing to focus on expansion.”
Having served as a regional manager, broker of record and boots-on-the-ground agent throughout New England, Elwell said his mission has always been to advocate for brokers and help them scale.
“Danielle and I speak the language of real estate because we’ve lived it,” he said. “By marrying our operational expertise with RLTYco’s infrastructure, we are bridging the gap between the brokerage business model, a broker’s day-to-day realities and the long-term growth goals of both.”
