We recently interviewed Anthony Lamacchia of Lamacchia Realty and he gave us a look at his journey from a single agent to a real estate team lead, to having one of the fastest-growing independent brokerages in the country.
At the time of the interview, they have 421 agents, already closed the billion dollars of business year to date, and are on track to close $1.5B by the end of the year. They closed 179 million in the month of August. They are mainly located in New England and opened in Florida last year.
Lamacchia Realty is now licensed in six states although Massachusetts and New Hampshire is where they do most of their business with Southern New Hampshire and Massachusetts being the most, and then Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine. Those states are more just contiguous to the agents that they have that live on the borders and things like that. In Florida, they recently opened in Fort Lauderdale. They are planning on opening three offices to open between now and the end of the year three brands.
Contents
- About Anthony
- Leads Team
- Structuring Your Leadership Organization
- Why Training Platforms are Essential for Agent Recruitment
- What You Should Look for in a Real Estate Brokerage?
- Agent Recruitment Mistakes to Avoid
- The Next Big Thing for Lamacchia Real Estate
About Anthony
Anthony grew up working with his dad at a landscape construction business. He was fortunate to be exposed to business at a very young age. His dad had a landscape construction business. His grandfather was an accountant. When Anthony was 23 years old after getting out of high school, he didn’t go to college because he wanted to get into real estate as he was already buying properties and flipping. He was a landlord by 21.
He started at REMAX but at REMAX had a business partner and then they had an assistant pretty quickly because he was still trying to work in his dad’s business and work in real estate. He did that for about 20 months and then his ex-business partner at the time was still building homes.
They hired a woman named Sarah, who is his Vice President of finance today and she was assisting them and they hit the ground running pretty quick. Then in late 2007 the recession hit. They found their footing and adjusted and got into short sales, foreclosures. That was a good portion of their business for more than a few years.
Then in 2014 and 2015 is when he made major real changes. He bought out his business partner and converted us to a brokerage model.
Anthony states that a lot of the connections he made were made at real estate conferences and many of those were done at the hotel bar or at a dinner with asset managers, other agents, and team leaders. Those were lasting connections that he taps into today. He says that people really underestimate the value of these.
Anthony was with REMAX then Realty Executives and went on their own. In February 2009, they had four full-time staff members. They had two that were licensed, agents. They were selling 400 homes a year. It was Anthony, his ex-business partner, maybe two or three agents. When he looked back at it, he knew he didn’t have this perfect plan, but he knew he was gonna grow. He didn’t quite know-how and they just built up from there.
In 2012, after five years of just kicking ass with listings, he thought that he had to do better with buyers and learn how to convert buyers. He learned how to service his clients better and started focusing on hiring more real estate agents, and then just built up. It snowballed. In 2014, they owned the real estate brokerage and went on their own in 2009. He bought his ex-business partner out in 2014. In 2015, he converted us out of being a team model. If you go look at unreal trends, he ranked every year from 2010 to 2015.
Anthony stopped submitting for Team rankings anymore. He disappeared off real trends for three years and now they’re back every year. They’re in the Top 500 Brokerages. They were in the Top 250 last year and believe they’ll do better than that this year. He then totally said he’s not doing a team anymore and focused on brokerage. They started to offer all the same things that teams offer and more, and give agents a legitimate place to ramp up their business. That was a big thing for Anthony because he knew what the typical team model is.
But with a typical real estate team model, it’s hard to keep agents more than three or four years because they build up their own name, they’re gonna fly away and Anthony didn’t want them to fly away. He knew if he created his own model, he could create a runway that agents could stay with them long term.
Leads Team
They were recruiting agents that are doing 10 to 40 million all the time and agents that are doing zero to 10 million. Anthony finds it very hard to recruit agents that are doing north of 10 or 15 million a year north of 30 or 25 transactions here if you give any appearance of being a competitor of theirs.
They still brought in leads but were just careful with that word team. They found that to be a little bit problematic with respect to recruiting, with respect to the agents. So they just got rid of the name. They just called it a lead product because leads are a product that they have that agents can tap into when they build their pipeline. Buyer leads, seller leads, relocation. They do a lot in the relocation space. So now they call it Lead Products.
A lot of team leaders have it reversed. They tried, they think they’re gonna keep somebody under their thumb forever. He looks at it the opposite way. Anthony tells his agents, listen, use our leads for a year and a half, two years, three years, wherever you need to ramp but your goal is to get yourself off the leads.
Anthony states that it’s just a numbers thing. They had around 75 agents by the beginning of 2016. Right now, they have 421 as of this morning. Out of the 421, there are about 75 that are receiving some type of lead products from the company.
Structuring Your Leadership Organization
Anthony thinks that different leadership organization models work for different people. From his perspective, they have six Vice Presidents in the companies. One is Vice President of Finance, Vice President of Operations, Vice President of Marketing, Vice President of Sales, Vice President of Business Development, where business development is essentially recruiting, retention and onboarding.
The Business Development person is the very key. Business Development, Recruiting, Retention, Onboarding, Marketing. Marketing is all things you can imagine. The VP of that oversees the marketing for all the companies and definitely Crush It In Real Estate and the nationals.
Why Training Platforms are Essential for Agent Recruitment
In an article from RealTrends, Anthony said that putting a training platform is going to be essential for recruitment. He was quoted saying how training had an impact on recruiting. When he looks at training customers, the people who really leverage the training, and require their new agents to come in to go through it and use it the same way that they do help them recruit time.
To think of it this way, human beings as a whole. They want direction. It’s like kids. Kids don’t say I want structure, I want direction, but they do. So when somebody is new at something or even mediocre at something they love; okay, what do I do, oh, I do that, then I do this. You got to realize if there are team leaders listening. Anthony added that we need to realize most people aren’t like us. You’re a self-starter. I’m a self-starter. If he has 40% knowledge on something, he will just say, ask her what I can do it, I’ll work hard, I’ll learn. He’ll motive his way through it.
Most human beings, if there are 10 things to know and they don’t know, all 10, they get all screwed up in their head, they lose confidence. So that’s why their training has been so critical. And that’s why they vertically integrated it to offer it across North America. They trained customers literally all over Canada and it’s the same training that they’re offering here in their company.
The agents are required to go through orientation. Orientation is two days to be in the company, where they just tell them, hey, this is here, your buffet, take whatever you would like, you will find that it will help you the way.
When the real estate agents want to get on company leads, there are no ifs, ands, or buts. They have to go through the training program and when completed, they have to go through lead onboarding day.
Every three weeks, Lamacchia Realty has a class where they go through the expectations, real estate technology, how it works, and they have to sign an addendum. They are full of expectations and understandings. They have a specific agenda and they walk people through it because it’s helpful.
Anthony believes that if you’re not committed enough to command from 10 am to 3 pm, then they are not spending money on you on leads. They have agents that do 10 million and ask to get on leave. No, they got to go through. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts. Now his agents have reached the point they don’t even question, they know. They can tell that they are consistent and we don’t play games.
What You Should Look for in a Real Estate Brokerage?
Lamacchia Realty is a full-service value-based real estate brokerage. Anthony is a believer that is what is important. While not everybody feels that way, there are some agents that desire to just have the highest commission split possible and that’s what they’re looking for good.
Anthony states that they are not uncompetitive, they’re competitive. They value service, they add value to the agents’ lives so that they can have a good life, both in the business and outside. He adds that some agents forget that. They had people leave when they mention new agents. They start kicking ass, they get cocky. They leave. Every year they get bigger, but two to five that leave and come back.
On lead onboarding day, they say, guys, listen, our goal is to get you off leads eventually. Anthony says that when that happens, they start feeling like they want to get off, don’t get aggravated, don’t get agitated at the company. He says to tell them if they noticed that you should get off. They’ll talk to you about it but the next stage for the agents is just working those by referral programs, building up their past client database, and working in that database to get more business and they embrace it better now. After they shifted on how they dealt with it, it made a big difference.
They tell that agent to do their work by referral course for them to have access to their system. They have a whole course in there on working by referral. Work in your sphere, build your database, be in touch, an agent needs to do that.
Agent Recruitment Mistakes to Avoid
Anthony had some mistakes he made that he advises others not to do such as not doing a good job at weaning people off leads. That was a mistake years ago where they were just too strict with too many things and it prohibited their growth.
For a long time, they had the MLS sales going in their system. They were tougher about kicking agents off leads and not as delicate and didn’t realize how much it affected the agents and how they felt. He says that there’s this different delicacy that they can have along the way that will help. Whether they like it or not, they are in the people business. This unless they are transacting, unless they are a practitioner, working with buyers and sellers, even then they’re in the people business.
Anthony states that when you’re working as a Realtor, it’s not business-to-business relationships, you’re in the people business. It took them a few years to get that. Anthony thinks that it took the management team a little more time with him. And it took him continuing to push it for them to go over it. Another mistake they made along the way is not recognizing fast enough certain advertisements since they are in a very interesting business.
Their business is like the weather. As soon as you get used to it, it changes. They had sizing programs that worked over the years and all sudden they thought why isn’t it working? So they tweaked this and tweaked that and tried it.
With such a huge trajectory doing so many different things, more things are coming on the horizon for Lamacchia real estate. They will be taking their services to a whole new level. As a full-service value-based brokerage, they will have listing assistance for the agents, buyer assistance. Today, Lamacchia Realty has a marketing assistance program where they help agents post on their Facebook business page on a weekly basis and send mailers out at least once a month.
The Next Big Thing for Lamacchia Realty
Lamacchia Realty is coming out with something new called the Agent Field Services and you’re reading it first here. They hired three full-time Realtors, salary benefits bonus, the whole deal.
They bought three keys and they are out of the road taking orders like an Uber from agents who put in a request such as I needed showing coverage at three o’clock tomorrow 10 o’clock today, whatever time, they have people on the road, they hit accept. There are introduction emails, connecting buyers, sellers, whoever with their people covering that showing, covering that open house, covering that home inspection for our Realtors because their top agents can’t show three homes to three different buyers at one time. Agent Field Services is a big thing.