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President Donald Trump has an ear for real estate, and for a few minutes in January, Anthony Lamacchia got to bend it.
The industry that put Trump on the map has felt under attack in recent years, and a chance meeting that put the Massachusetts brokerage leader in front of the president earlier this year provided an opening for Trump to hear about it.
Lamacchia, CEO of Lamacchia Companies, told Inman exclusively that he received an invite alongside other business leaders to sit down with Trump at Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach in January, two weeks before his inauguration for a second term in office.
At that meeting, Lamacchia told the incoming president that the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden appeared intent on punishing the real estate industry.
“I said, ‘Mr. President, are you aware that the Department of Justice has it out for real estate, organized real estate?’” Lamacchia told Inman. “He said, ‘I’m not. Tell me more.’”
Lamacchia said that for at least three minutes he talked “very substantially” with Trump about how the DOJ had backed out of a settlement agreement reached late in Trump’s first term.
The DOJ simultaneously announced a lawsuit and a settlement with the National Association of Realtors over various NAR rules in November 2020, after Trump lost his first re-election bid to former President Joe Biden. In July 2021, the DOJ withdrew from the settlement, and NAR tried for years fighting with the DOJ all the way to the Supreme Court.
At a meeting with 20 other business leaders, Lamacchia seized the opportunity to inform the president about one of real estate’s biggest headaches of late.
“He was not happy to hear it,” Lamacchia said. “He said, ‘Can you send me some information on that?’ So after the meeting, I sent an email to his assistant.”
Lamacchia spoke with Inman ahead of Inman Connect San Diego, where he’ll be speaking alongside other titans of real estate.
The following is a Q&A with Lamacchia, edited for clarity and brevity.
Inman: What do you expect the next three and a half, four years to be like under the Trump DOJ as it relates to real estate?
Lamacchia: I think it will be better. The prior DOJ, when Trump was in last time, was much more reasonable. And they made a deal with us.
I told Trump this. I met with Trump in January with 20 other business owners. I said, ‘Mr. President, are you aware that the Department of Justice has it out for real estate, organized real estate?’ He said, ‘I’m not. Tell me more.’ I said, ‘Your Department of Justice made a deal with NAR in November of 2020, signed the deal. There were a couple of industry changes that were agreed to, and Biden’s DOJ came in and undid the deal in June of 2021.’
And he was like, ‘Really?’ He was not happy to hear it. He said, ‘Can you send me some information on that? So after the meeting, I sent an email to his assistant and I never heard anything. But he was not happy to hear it.
I would think that this would be an industry that he would have an ear out for.
Frankly, I’ve been sitting around saying, when’s the shoe going to drop? Because I talked to him about it for three, probably three and a half minutes straight. Very substantively.
He was very interested. He asks very good questions. I mean, this guy, there’s no flies on him. And he said to me, ‘Why were you guys being investigated in the first place?’ And I said, ‘Well, the DOJ does an investigation in various industries every so many years. And with real estate, they do it about every decade.’ And then he goes, ‘Oh, antitrust?’
I said, yes. He goes, ‘OK, that makes sense.’ I said, ‘They negotiated for about a year, agreed to a couple of small changes. Your DOJ made the deal, finalized the deal in November of ‘20. Biden’s DOJ came in and undid the deal for the first time in history. A DOJ deal was undone.’ And he did not know. He was like, ‘Wow.’
That’s pretty incredible.
At the end, when I took a picture with him, he grabbed my arm and he goes, ‘OK, make sure to send that information.’ ‘OK, I will.’ He goes, ‘Don’t forget.’
I go, ‘Mr. President, I’m not going to forget.’
That’s interesting. I had no idea you met with him. Why did you not make it public?
I think just because it’s like everybody is so politically mental now. From where I sit, if Biden, if I had a chance to meet with Biden a year, two years, three years ago, I would have done it in a second.
But if I met with Biden, everybody would be like, ‘Oh, cool.’ You meet with Trump. It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re horrible.’ Listen, it was a business meeting.
On CCP, you’ve been clear all along. You said throughout you wanted CCP to stay, but that NAR was basically in a bind and needed to do something. What was the bind that they were in.
DOJ pressure. And then Robert Reffkin. I think he sort of self-perpetuated it. And hey, you know, good for him if that’s how he feels, but I think he’s wrong. And I also think the way that he went about it was terrible.
I mean, he’s criticizing NAR. You see the stupid post he did one weekend, put up a post about, this is NAR’s boardroom. What the hell does that have to do with the CCP policy?
But I think Robert Reffkin and the DOJ, although the DOJ never publicly came out and said they’re for or against CCP. But I think they pressured NAR. I don’t know that, just so you know. But I think they sort of put pressure on them.
Maybe I’m asking the wrong guy here, given where you already stand. But how is that pro-consumer in the DOJ’s eyes? Do you have any idea?
They don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. You can quote me on that. They don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. And here’s the thing. When I say the DOJ, I’m talking about the DOJ that we’ve seen for the last four years. I really can’t tell if this new DOJ is different yet. From what I’ve heard, they’re a bit more reasonable.
They’re a bit more business friendly. But when I say that comment, I’m referring more to the policies of the last four years. My attitude is the DOJ of the last four years has really gotten things wrong in our industry.
Do you feel like the industry itself, players in the industry are divided amongst each other right now? Does it feel like a divisive time or or not?
Yes, there’s no question. And part of it’s just grumpiness. There’s been a very big housing recession for three years now and people are just grumpy. And I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or if it was on purpose, but our industry also came under attack. You know, came under attack from frivolous lawsuits.
And it ended up being that, you know, we got hit with what I refer to as judicially sanctioned extortion. But even putting the case aside, there’s just other stuff.
It’s a divided industry. What are you doing? What are you standing for?
The biggest thing I want to see is interest rates come down. The biggest thing.
I do think that the Trump administration is making some progress that is going to lead to interest rates coming down. But is it happening as fast as we would all like or as fast as he promised? No. It’s hard to fix the system. But there are some roots of the economy that are screwed up.
And he’s obviously working to fix that. And I think it’s working. And I think we’re going to see rates come down later in the year.
