In a new Inman opinion piece, Brown Harris Stevens’ Maggie Ross argues that the industry’s biggest battles over data, consolidation and technology are overlooking the people at the center of the business: real estate agents.
Real estate has been consumed by a series of big industry stories: mergers, market share, listing data, private listings, portals and technology. But amid all of that disruption, one important question is getting less attention: What does all of this mean for the real estate agent?
That is the question Maggie Ross, Senior Managing Director of Sales for Brown Harris Stevens Brooklyn, takes on in a new opinion piece for Inman, “No One Is Protecting Real Estate Agents. That’s a Problem.”
Ross brings a particularly informed perspective to the conversation. Before entering real estate, she spent six years practicing antitrust and commercial litigation. She went on to spend 17 years as a real estate agent, giving her a firsthand understanding of both sides of the brokerage relationship. Today, she leads sales for BHS in Brooklyn.
Her argument is straightforward: While companies and platforms fight over data, inventory and market share, the agents who actually serve buyers and sellers cannot become an afterthought.
An Industry in the Middle of a Major Shift.
The Compass-Anywhere merger brought major brands including Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, ERA, Corcoran and Sotheby’s International Realty under one company. Compass has also entered into a multiyear agreement with Rocket and Redfin, further connecting brokerage, search, financing and transaction-related businesses.
At the same time, the fight over listing data has intensified. In New York, StreetEasy has changed how it treats listings appearing in the Real Estate Board of New York’s Residential Listing Service, including listings designated “participants only.” That designation allows cooperating brokers to access a listing while keeping it off public portals—an option that can be important to sellers seeking privacy.
Ross uses a recent Brooklyn example to illustrate why these questions are not simply theoretical. A seller going through a divorce wanted privacy from neighbors and extended family while still allowing other brokers to see the property and potentially bring a buyer.
For Ross, that example gets to the heart of the larger issue: who gets to make decisions about how a listing is marketed, where information is distributed and how agents serve their clients when increasingly large companies control pieces of the transaction?
The Agent Is Both a Service Provider and a Consumer
One of the most important points in Ross’s piece comes from her legal background.
She argues that agents should not be viewed solely as people who provide services through a brokerage. Agents are also consumers of brokerage services. They rely on their brokerage for infrastructure, technology, marketing, data, support and other resources that allow them to build and maintain their businesses. As the brokerage landscape becomes more consolidated, there are fewer options and less recourse for agents.
The decisions being made by large companies and technology platforms can directly affect an agent’s ability to market a property, reach clients, access inventory and compete in the marketplace. And because agents have built their businesses around relationships and local expertise, changes to those systems can have consequences that extend far beyond technology.
Technology Doesn’t Replace the Agent
Ross also makes a broader point about what actually creates value in residential real estate.
Technology can make transactions more efficient. Data can help agents and consumers make better decisions. Platforms can make information easier to access.
But the value of an experienced agent is not simply access to a database.
It is knowing the neighborhood. Knowing the inventory. Knowing which buyer might be right for a particular property. Knowing the history of a building or block. Understanding a client’s priorities and recognizing the opportunity that may not be obvious from a search result.
Ross uses her own experience buying a home to make the point: She found her house by calling a broker who had lived in the neighborhood for decades and knew the people, the inventory and the market well enough to recognize a property that would be unusually well suited to her family.
That, she argues, is the business.
A Bigger Conversation About the Future of Real Estate
As brokerages consolidate, portals expand their influence, technology becomes more deeply embedded in transactions and companies connect more pieces of the real estate ecosystem, agents will have an increasingly important role in shaping what comes next.
The industry, with no Federal oversight, has to self-direct on how those changes should work for the people actually doing the work—and for the consumers who rely on them.
For Ross, that means recognizing that agents are not interchangeable components of a technology platform. They are professionals who spend years building businesses based on relationships, expertise and trust.
And as the industry debates who should control data, listings and access to consumers, she believes agents need a voice in that conversation.
Read Maggie Ross’s full piece in Inman: “No One Is Protecting Real Estate Agents. That’s a Problem.”
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