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New York-based Corcoran Group launched its Corcoran Affiliate Network in February 2020, which would end up being one of the most frantic times in recent history to launch a new business endeavor as the COVID-19 pandemic was getting underway.
But the firm persevered and today has 34 affiliates across 10 countries, under the leadership of Stephanie Anton, who serves as the affiliate network’s president.
This week, Corcoran held its BeCorcoran networking event for all affiliates in Scottsdale, Arizona, where attendees talked about some of the industry’s hottest topics today, including private listings networks, inventory, the economy and more. But at the end of the day, despite differences from market to market, Anton told Inman that affiliates learned that they’re more alike than different — particularly when it comes to serving their clients.
“Watching them learn and get ideas from each other and turn to each other for brainstorming and support, it’s making it a really, really powerful, emotional and personal experience,” Anton told Inman during a break in the event.
As BeCorcoran was underway, Inman spoke with Anton more about the network’s growth, current topics in the industry and more. Here’s what she had to say.
Inman: It seems like you have been so busy since the Corcoran Affiliate Network launched about five years ago. I can’t believe it’s been that long.
Stephanie Anton: I was just talking about that on stage, because it’s been just past five years. And so we launched in February of 2020, which, good God, what a horrific time to launch. But, it’s been such a whirlwind. Because, at first, it was so crazy. We weren’t sure what was going to happen, and then it has just really taken off.
One of my favorite things is to show the map [of offices]. If you think about where we were in 2020, we were in two states really at the time: in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Palm Beach, so technically, three dots on the map. And now we’re in 10 countries in five years. So it’s super cool.
That is amazing. I imagine there are a lot of things, but what do you think have been some of the biggest things that you’ve learned going through this process of creating the affiliate network, and what have been some of the biggest challenges?
Good question. Learned, and I sort of knew it coming from a similar background at a different brand, but bringing it to a new brand, I think, what was the most fun or kind of cool thing to learn and watch everybody else around us learn is the power of this, of having all these connections in other markets.
We just had a panel of agents in four different markets, and they talked about what it means to have this network and to be in all of these markets, and the fact that it speaks to not just the professionalism but the expertise. People are more comfortable with a brand that’s in more places, because the markets are so different from one another.
We have 900 or so agents in the Bay Area, and that’s our largest affiliate, and then our smallest affiliate when they launched was four agents in Turks and Caicos. We only have 34 affiliates. I mean, it’s a lot for five years, but to have that kind of breadth, to go from 900 to four — there’s no one size fits all.
So it’s the same thing with the markets. Like I said, I knew that going into it, but it’s been fun for everyone else to see and learn that we’re all in such different markets, and yet we have so many things in common, and we can learn from each other. Watching them learn and get ideas from each other and turn to each other for brainstorming and support, it’s making it a really, really powerful, emotional and personal experience, which has been fun. Really, really fun. I’m really proud of that.
That’s great to hear. As you see people from different affiliates networking at BeCorcoran this week and just talking, what are the big topics of conversation?
Obviously, people are talking a lot about private listings and the impact that’s happening there, clearly the economy, and, obviously, in the past week, it’s interesting — we had a gentleman from HousingWire here yesterday, and someone asked him what the last three days foretell for the future? And he’s like, ‘Well, I don’t know. We don’t have a trend yet.’
So, I think the uncertainty and the change in the markets are, it has people obviously nervous, but they’re talking a lot about how they’re coping with it, and how to think about it. And I think that anyone who’s been in this business for any period of time, generally people, our folks, are experienced people. They’ve all been through ups and downs and ups and downs. We wouldn’t be attracted to this business if we didn’t like some of that. So that’s a big piece of it, I think.
So, the stock market, what’s selling … We had an interesting conversation today about inventory and about the difference between what’s happening in the North versus what’s happening in the South. And I was sharing about how we’ve seen people not moving from, say, Connecticut to Florida the way they had in the past, in part because it’s gotten more expensive.
Migration has slowed down. Things like insurance in Florida and other places, it’s making migratory patterns change. And so we just talked a lot about inventory, because if you talk to somebody in Connecticut or in Bergen County, New Jersey, and say that in Austin, Texas, there’s too much inventory, they look at you like you’re crazy, because their world is so different.
So being able to help people understand how they play a part in the bigger world is a really rewarding part of what we’re doing.
Stephanie Anton speaking on a panel at BeCorcoran 2025 in Scottsdale, Arizona | AJ Canaria
Good. So at this point you’ve grown a lot. What are the next big goals for the affiliate network?
It’s a good question. Domestically, it’s no surprise that the brand is a high-end lifestyle brand, so it does resonate in high-end, urban, suburban and second-home markets. And so when you look at the map, clearly being a New York-centered brand, we’ve done very well in New York and on the East Coast and the coasts of the country where the high-end business is done.
But, we have a huge opportunity in Texas and the Pacific Northwest, and then the Southwest as well. These are places that the brand has not got as strong a foothold quite yet, so we still have a lot of room to grow domestically. So that’s a big, big focus for us.
And then I would say, internationally, we’re really focused on Western Europe especially, and we have a lot of countries and ground to cover there. We’ve had some really exciting conversations. We’ve got three companies coming from Europe to the city in a couple of weeks for a meet and greet.
And then I would say, also, Canada and Mexico. We have an affiliate in Ontario who’s growing and expanding, and then we just launched Cabo a few months ago. So we have a lot of room for for growth in those areas as well.
Thinking about these new changes to the industry that NAR announced recently — they’ll be keeping Clear Cooperation in place, but there’s this new Delayed Marketing Exempt Listing option for homesellers. And I know Corcoran has done a soft launch on its own private listing network, so how do you think these things stand to change the market, if at all? Or what kind of impact will they have on the industry as people think more about private listings and use that as an option to sell?
I think for us, private listings are nothing new, and certainly in the high end, we’ve always done them for certain circumstances, and for us, that’s all we’re going to continue to do, is to support those circumstances and make resources available so that we know that we have something that fits our clients’ needs. But it’s all client-driven.
We really want to make sure that we let our client tell us how they want us to market their property, and if they want it done privately, we have that service. If they want it publicly, 100 percent we’re happy to do that, too. And, you know, it’s just really balance, and ensuring that they have the visibility and the best service to sell their house for the highest price, whatever that service is.
Great. What other big takeaways have you come away with from BeCorcoran so far this week?
I think one of our brokers on this panel was just talking about the fact that one of the reasons they decided to join Corcoran was because we’re being very thoughtful about the way we’re growing the brand, that it’s quality, not quantity.
It’s important to have breadth, and it’s important to be growing, but we’re trying to really focus on growing in the right places with the right partners, and I think it’s a little bit different than maybe some of our competitors out there.
So we’re keeping our head down and being true to who we are and who Corcoran is. And for us, this is only the third time we’ve done this BeCorcoran conference, partially because we launched this network in the middle of a pandemic.
So, it continues to blow my mind how similar we are versus how different we are, even though you’ve got a top producer panel up there talking about $80 million and $100 million sales. And then on the next panel, we have a broker, a very top broker from Charlotte, North Carolina, who’s talking about how a $4 million sale is a really big deal in her market.
And you ask them both, ‘What have you learned about working with the high-net-worths?’ And they have the same answers. You know, it’s all about high touch, high service, being a resource. A lot of conversations today about being honest and being authentic.
It doesn’t matter if it’s $80 million or it’s $4 million dollars. It’s really about the customer, and that customer is going to drive it. So it’s cool to see, because when you bring people on in different markets that are far away from your original market, you have to be strategic about the people that you bring into the brand, and it’s working. And that’s, I think, maybe the most exciting thing for me to see.
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