Aaron Kirman built one of the highest-earning teams in the country at Compass before striking out on his own, and today leads AKG | Christie’s International Real Estate Southern California, a brokerage he’s grown to roughly 350 agents since founding it in 2022. During those years, he has represented everything from Beverly Hills trophy estates to private islands and branded hotel developments.
Ahead of his appearance at Inman Luxury Connect, where he’ll take part in the private listings debate with Jason Oppenheim and Patrick Kearns, we caught up with Kirman to talk about consolidation, thriving and where the luxury market is headed next.
This year’s Inman Connect theme is ‘The Reset Is Here. Build What’s Next.’ From your perspective, what does that reset actually look like for brokers, team leaders and agents today?
The reset is here on every front. The market has reset, the way we do business has reset, and who owns the brokerages has reset.
The people at the forefront of that innovation are the ones who are going to prosper. It’s not about the old-school approach anymore — it’s not the mailers and the door knocking. It’s a savvier, more intellectual approach, embracing AI.
I also believe that for agents, it’s about embracing a partnership approach, because this is no longer a one-person business. It’s a team business and a group business, and relationships matter. Everybody works together to make things happen, and I believe that also has to do with picking the right brokerage and making sure everyone on your team feels supported.
And look, as they say in this business, 10 percent of the people do 90 percent of the business, which I tend to think is true, and it’s getting more competitive every day. So if brokers and agents want to stay at the top of their game, they’re going to have to embrace the new way of doing business and evolve.
As one of the most successful leaders in luxury real estate, what’s the one market signal you’re watching most closely right now, and how is it influencing your strategy for the next 6 to 12 months?
The biggest thing I’m watching is still interest rates. That’s the signal that moves everything. When rates move, buyer confidence moves with them, inventory moves, and the whole psychology of the market shifts.
In luxury, it plays out a little differently, because a lot of our buyers are paying cash and they’re less rate-sensitive on the financing side, and it does still impact them in other ways. Rates still set the tone for the entire market, and that tone trickles up. So I’m watching them closely.
The way it’s shaping my strategy for the next six to 12 months is simple. We’re leaning into the segments that stay strong regardless of where rates land, which is why we’re so focused on new development and the ultra-luxury end, especially in LA, which has traditionally been a single-family market, and we’re seeing a ton of demand there.
We have just recently launched our first New Development Division at Christie’s International Real Estate Southern California, led by myself, Tomer Fridman, Amir Ensani and Don Hellers, who are all really experienced in the new development market. We already have over $30 billion in inventory, from Beverly Hills to Dubai.
When the broader market is uncertain, you want to be positioned in the places where demand holds, and you want the right partnerships and the right brokerage behind you. That’s where we’re putting our energy.
With continued consolidation, margin pressure and rapid advances in technology, where do you see the biggest opportunities for brokers and agents to gain an advantage right now?
I think the beautiful thing about this new world and this new generation is that you don’t have to have 40 years in a marketplace to dominate a marketplace. Because of tech and social media, anybody can break in. Because of AI, anybody can learn faster and break in, and people are breaking in every day.
If you know how to get to the right people at the right time as an agent, you can build your reputation and get clients faster. It’s no longer a matter of hearing from clients, “I’m going to go with X person because they’ve owned that area for 40 years.” It’s a wide-open market for anybody who knows how to use tech, embraces it, and knows how to leverage it and get in front of the right people.
When I started in this business 30 years ago, it wasn’t like that at all. It was almost impossible to break in, because it was a mom-and-pop business built entirely on history and reputation. Today, reputation still matters, but you can build it so much faster using the tools the world has given us with tech and social media. That’s the opportunity.
The barrier to entry has lowered, and the agents who move fast and use what’s in front of them are the ones who win.
When you look at the brokerages and agents who are thriving in today’s market, what are they doing differently from everyone else?
The agents who are thriving are the ones embracing teams. They have what I call a lot of soldiers, or a lot of tentacles out in the marketplace. They’re taking the foundation of the old way, the calls, the postcards, the relationship building, and combining it with the new way of doing business, which is geofencing, digital marketing, AI intelligence, AI tools that make you move faster.
As a group, they’re dominating the marketplace by working both sides at once. And the ones really embracing the new way are pulling ahead.
Look at our own brokerage as an example. We have so many younger, newer agents who’ve been in the business five years and are doing anywhere from $60 million to $250 million in sales in a single year. And in the industry overall, there are people who’ve been in it for 30, 40, 50 years who are struggling today, because they haven’t embraced a new way of doing business. They’re waiting for the market to come back to them, which isn’t feasible.
It used to be a referral-based business, but I’m a firm believer that your client is not always your client. When an agent says, “that’s my client,” it may be your client for the moment, but nobody owns a client anymore. Clients go with whoever is in front of them at the right time, at the right moment. The days of having a client are over, and that’s exactly why the new systems matter so much. You have to be in front of every client all the time to have market dominance.
Looking ahead, what are you most optimistic about for the future of real estate, and what are you personally leaning into as you think about what’s next?
I think the sky’s the limit. At Christie’s SoCal, we embrace AI, we embrace technology, we embrace every tool that helps us do this better. There’s no other business where you can control your time, your energy and your money the way you can in real estate.
It’s a brilliant business. It’s not an easy business, but anybody in it should be optimistic, because anybody can be tremendously successful with the right technology and the right partnerships behind them. That’s what I’m leaning into. The tools have never been better, and the opportunity has never been more open.
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