At the beginning of 2025, Engel & Völkers Americas’ Stuart Siegel had some big shoes to fill at the luxury brand.
Anthony Hitt, who had served as CEO and president for the past 11 years after starting at the company back in 2010, was stepping down to pursue endeavors outside of real estate. Siegel, who had been serving as the luxury firm’s chief strategy officer, stepped up to the plate as interim president and CEO, and ultimately adopted the role in a permanent capacity.
TAKE THE INMAN INTEL SURVEY FOR SEPTEMBER
With more than four decades of experience in luxury real estate, hospitality and consulting, Siegel has seen a lot. So, when Inman asked if he was at all surprised by the news of Compass making a move to acquire Anywhere, he seemed unphased, saying that “very little truly surprises me” at this point in his career.
Inman caught up with the new CEO to digest the latest big headlines, talk about the market and get an update on Engel & Völkers’ Americas latest moves. Here’s what he had to say, edited for brevity and clarity.
Inman: Let’s talk about the market. How are agents doing right now?
Stuart Siegel: Market conditions are interesting, and I should preface this by saying, my observations are somewhat narrow in that, you know, we’re very focused on the luxury sector … We have an average price that hovers right around $1 million dollars. So that defines my perspective.
The market is not directional. What does that mean? It’s not a buyer’s market, it’s not a seller’s market. It’s a market of opportunity. And we are basically seeing pockets that are really resilient and strong, both in sector and geography. And we’re also seeing two months where we think everything is gonna be fine and it’s gonna be a great year and then two months where it tails off. So that’s what I mean by it’s not directional. Our business, our sector is not as rate sensitive as other sectors of the market. Now, where rates come in is on perception and psychic belief in the market versus actually driving transactions. So, for example, the last quarter, we did 10 or so sales over $10 million, well, a lot more than 10 … and two of the 10 were land and ranch sales. So, it’s really interesting where the pockets sometimes are resilient or defy market expectations.
We refer to our sales folks as ‘advisors.’ It’s an advisory market. It’s advising a seller what realistic pricing can be, and it’s sourcing opportunities for buyers.
That’s great. I’d like to talk to you a bit about all the market happenings within the industry too. Just this week a big thing happened with Compass announcing plans to acquire Anywhere.
Really?? [Sarcastically] I hadn’t heard …
Ha, right. I think it’s something that took a lot of people by surprise and I was curious if it surprised you or what your takeaways are?
I’ve been in the industry over 40 years so very little truly surprises me. But I think what this is, is it’s symptomatic of consolidations that are happening in a lot of industries. And there are those who are looking to take advantage of synergies and take advantage of consolidations… that are not necessarily customer-driven consolidations.
But they do benefit the shareholders and the investors. This is certainly very aggressive corporate finance deleveraging balance sheets.
From my perspective, we’re very focused on culture over indiscriminate scale. We’re very focused on our community, we’re very focused on creating the best opportunities for our advisors. And I think the challenge is, again, this is all hypothetical because the deal hasn’t closed — we don’t know what it’s going to look like when it closes. But, I wonder how you integrate nine different brands into a culture? I don’t know how you get three luxury brands, two of which are auction company brands, that are housed under the same ownership groups.
I just don’t know how that exists, how you integrate that, and it’s a homogenization, ultimately, and that’s clearly what it looks like, of those brands. We look at ourselves and we’re very proud of the fact that we built a culture, we’re a singular brand with a singular owner, and that owner really is ‘invested’ in our success. They’re not trying to hedge it through owning multiple brands that effectively compete with one another, so that if I’m with Brand X, I lose the business, but guess what? I also own Brand A, B, C, D, and E. I as a shareholder benefit. What does that do for me as an agent operating in one of those things?
I don’t know the answer to that.
I ask hypothetically. But those are the kinds of questions I’m asking, From our perspective, we’re a singular brand with a singular owner. And we’re very much a bottom-up focus, meaning we focus on everything we do based on how does it make a salesperson better and how does it make our franchisee even better?
Right. And Engel & Völkers [Americas], while it’s a bit different in some ways since the brand is owned by its German parent company, from my perspective, it’s never really seemed big on mergers and acquisitions. But with that kind of trending now in the market, could you see that happening more with the Engel & Völkers Americas brand?
Well, we have very committed ownership and we have a very strong culture and community. So I think the first standard for us is, is that a cultural and community fit?
So we’re always looking to grow the business, but we find that we can grow our culture most effectively organically. And what we try and do is support our franchisees, our license partners, to grow in their markets, both organically through M&A, through tuck-ins, and that’s kind of the bottom-up approach that I was talking about.
Going back to market conditions for agents right now, especially in the luxury sector, what do you see as the biggest challenge for them today?
It’s really making sure that they are armed and empowered with the right tools, understanding the value of the brand and when the brand can help them win business and when their own local expertise wins business, and how do you marry those two.
So, the biggest challenges right now, I think, in the industry is really valuation and pricing. Making sure that properties that we represent, making sure that the pricing and the valuation relates to the market. This is not a market where you’re going to generate unrealistic premiums.
Thinking about other market sales trends right now, we’ve seen a lot of companies and agents talk more about private listings, office exclusives, pocket listings, etc. How you do feel about the private listing network debate today?
We are in so many markets — and a lot of it is dictated by local MLSs and local practice, so being a franchise owner, I have to defer to that. Personally, I feel that the job of a real estate broker is not to sell real estate. You know what the job of a real estate broker is?
To serve their client?
To get it sold. To serve their clients — and get it sold.
Regardless of the source of sale. Somehow, private listing databases or private listings — you referred to the term ‘pocket listings’ — seem antithetical to that. It seems to me not necessarily to be a consumer-driven decision, more a company decision.
It’s not a brokerage strategy, it’s a business strategy. And truly, if we’re brokers trying to service our customers the best way, what do you want to do? You want to create the most expansive universe of qualified buyers as quickly as possible. Private databases don’t seem to me to do that.
Now having said that, there are times where we have properties that are owned by high-profile individuals. There are properties that really require very focused, rifle-shot marketing, and that cannot be put on a broad public market, but those are the exception, not the rule. And that’s the kind of messaging we’ve been sharing with our franchisees, with our licensed partners and with our advisors.
What excites you at Engel & Völkers right now?
I think the most exciting thing for us is this idea that we’re really not a name, we’re truly a global platform.
The number of intra-country referrals cross-border is really, really powerful. My colleagues here on the Americas staff interact with the colleagues in EMEA, and we have one person here who’s a senior vice president who’s focused on that kind of business sharing idea.
We just finished a very large transaction, for example, that was generated out of Aspen to Berlin. And I’ve just heard about an amazing transaction that happened in Switzerland that was referred to out of Canada. So there’s lots of this cross-border work that’s happening.
And then the other part that’s really exciting is how the brand is resonating throughout Central America and Mexico. We’ve established a really good footprint in those markets — Panama, Mexico City — it’s really just been an eyebrow lift how the brand resonates in those markets.
I think the hottest topic for us is culture over indiscriminate scale. And culture for us, not only is this sense of community and collaboration, but it’s also about the quality in the network…. We want to be known not as the biggest. I don’t have to chase market share. I chase quality.
Get Inman’s Luxury Lens Newsletter delivered right to your inbox. A weekly deep dive into the biggest news in the world of high-end real estate delivered every Friday. Click here to subscribe.
