Corcoran’s Stephanie Anton On Real Estate Franchising And Servant Leadership

In the newest episode of the RealTrending podcast, host Tracey Velt chats with Stephanie Anton, president of Corcoran Affiliates, the worldwide affiliate network for The Corcoran Group. In this conversation, Anton teaches listeners how to find their value proposition and leverage these skills into servant leadership.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To start the conversation, Anton explores her personal philosophy for leadership within Corcoran and the broader real estate industry. Anton starts by diving into her background.

Stephanie Anton: I’ve really sort of figured it out as I’ve gone. I’ve had a lot of great mentors, but I’ve always been a big believer in servant leadership. I’m very hands on and strategic, but I will roll up my sleeves. I’ve never been afraid to get my hands dirty and work next to my team.

Tracey Velt: So, what do you love about your job? Why don’t you tell the audience a little bit about your current position?

Anton: I’m the president of the affiliate network for Corcoran, which is a 50-year-old brokerage. And we launched a franchise, or an affiliate, nearly five years ago. We launched one month before the pandemic and that had its own unique set of challenges. But it’s been a huge success for a lot of fun reasons, which I’m happy to talk about.

Velt: Tell me a little bit about how that shaped your idea of strategically growing this firm.

Anton: We’ve based our entire business around putting relationships over transactions to make sure our clients feel valued. When you have a clear vision and a business that backs you to maintain that vision, then you can be comfortable making tough decisions. Being with an organization that supports that has been a big part of this too.

Velt: What are some of the key strategies that you found effective in growing and adding franchises to your network?

Anton: Initially, our goal was to target the high-end urban markets around the U.S. and internationally, and also their feeder and second-home markets. So, we’ve seen that the brand really resonates in exactly what you would think — it’s high-end urban and suburban resort and second-home markets.

That’s absolutely been driving our growth. When you understand the drivers behind people moving between markets, including economic drivers, that’s a really important part of it as well.

Velt: I do want to talk a little bit about the post-NAR settlement environment. How are your agents adapting?

Anton: We spent a year equipping our agents and franchisees to adapt. It was a really a big focus and we were way ahead of it, so when the day actually came, it was a non-event.

After a brief discussion on artificial intelligence and technology usage in real estate, the conversation ends with Anton sharing Corcoran Affiliates’ plans for the future.

Anton: We’re rolling out a couple of great new tools to educate people on neighborhoods using videos. We’re also doing more with AI and integrating it into our back end, making it easier to access each of our tools. We’re really excited about that.