Brown Harris Stevens is one of those real estate brokerages that is leery of making any sudden moves.
The New York City-headquartered firm has long thought of itself as a steady tortoise, CEO Bess Freedman told Inman recently. So much so, that former president Hall Willkie had been affiliated with the firm for 37 years before he announced he would be stepping down from his post at the beginning of July.
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In an uncertain real estate landscape, agents are increasingly attracted to such a stable brand, Freedman said, which is reflected in a growing number of agents and teams that BHS has recruited recently.
The CEO sat down with Inman this week to discuss how BHS is helping agents navigate an uncertain market, why the industry needs to restore confidence with consumers and the latest on private listing debates. Here’s what she had to say, edited for brevity and clarity.
Inman: How is the market doing right now?
Bess Freedman: It’s been a pretty positive last few months here in New York City and in our other regions. We’ve had really good buying and selling, and the numbers look good; the volume is up, which has been a positive sign.
Having said that, I do think we’re starting to feel a little bit of a slowdown and I think there’s various reasons for that. Although we saw mortgage rates [come] down to a three-year low, like 6.1 percent, and we’re seeing a huge number of people doing refis, everybody’s waiting for the Fed today, which I think is pretty much a given, that they’re going to cut the Fed fund rate about 25 basis points. [Note: The Fed cut rates by one-quarter percentage point. Inman’s interview with Freedman took place before that cut.]
Having said that, I do think there is concern, and they’re trying to avoid us entering a recession because we’ve seen a slowing job market. And I think Chairman Powell is responsible to make sure that he keeps inflation low and keeps the job market strong. Those are really his mandates from Congress.
And the president did say that he believed once he removed a lot of the illegal immigrants, our job market would be doing very well, but the opposite is happening, and I think that’s having an impact on our market overall. I think developers are holding off, there’s uncertainty, the cost of things are too much [and] affordability remains an issue.
It has been a little over a year now since the whole NAR lawsuit settlement came about and we’ve had some changes in the industry since then. How do you feel about where the industry is today, and what do you think agent confidence is like?
I think agent confidence — we need to build it. I did the RISMedia keynote address this year and the thing that I talked about was that we are in a trust crisis because only 20 percent of consumers trust real estate agents. And that NAR lawsuit obviously played into that — that’s not helpful.
Reality TV plays into that, brokerages fighting private listing networks, all that stuff is not helpful. And so, we need to sort of rebuild trust in the consumers with us.
And so we’re really leaning into that narrative with our agents, because they’re a trusted source for people during the most difficult times, you know, sometimes when someone loses a loved one or goes through a divorce or whatever it is … It’s not a transactional [business], it’s highly relational, and that’s what we try to focus on here. And we have to continue to do that and not get eaten up by that negative narrative that some brokerages and reality TV shows are sort of spurring.
This whole private listing debate has been going on for quite some time now, and there are still some very big figures in the industry with big opinions fighting one way or the other. Is that battle worth continuing at this point?
Just to be clear — and this is why it’s so frustrating, because people don’t really understand — the consumer doesn’t understand private listings, meaning ‘quiet,’ as we call them, ‘quiet listings,’ where people want the ultimate discretion. We’ve been doing that forever, and we still do that.
We get a call if somebody is a celebrity, a hedge fund manager, whatever it is, and they don’t want a listing out there [on the MLS or listing platforms], so they ask us to quietly reach out to our sphere of influence and help to sell it. And we do that all the time whenever somebody asks. But it’s rare; it’s the exception to the rule.
Compass has made it their rule. And I think it puts a lot of people at a disadvantage still. It’s unfair to the buyers who are looking and want to see everything, and it’s unfair to the sellers because they want to test the market in real time. That’s what a fair market structure does.
Imagine if we had a pretend stock market that tested stocks — it’s not right. Housing is an asset class, and it should be treated as such. And to make it like some sort of Mickey Mouse scam, I feel like really takes away from what we do.
I’m not in support of it. I’ve always supported seller’s choice, and their desire to sell something quietly. We always help them to do that. But if it’s private listings … then why do they have thousands of them and they’re promoting ‘only get this here on Compass.’ How does that help the seller?
If it’s not out there in the entire real estate world, you want to get the highest price by the most qualified [buyer] in real time. You could be missing out on that person that didn’t see it, because you only had it on Compass’s website, and then the seller would never know what their price could be.
I think they should be careful because they know regulators are watching, and I think Zillow, listen, they have enormous amounts of money. They have built something where all consumers go, they have billions of unique visitors, and I think that that’s where, if you ask nine out of 10 people, they will tell you they start their search on Zillow.
And so those are just facts, whether you like them or not. You kind of have to work with the army you have, not the one you want.
What does Brown Harris Stevens have going on right now? Any interesting plans for 2026?
We have a brand new website, and we lightly launched it. It’s really wonderful with all these tools on it, so that’s been a big thing that we’ve been working on for quite some time.
And also, 2026, we’re in the process of planning. We’re going to do this really nice party in January for the entire company, and we’re just focusing on trying to continue to hire the right kind of agents that work well here.
We have Hall [Wilkie] who’s been with us, is a big part of Brown Harris Stevens, and has sort of stepped into a different role at the company. He’s still here helping, is an incredible asset, but we promoted Itzy Garay and Kevin Kovesci who are sort of this new breed of professional, and they are the presidents now of the company and they’re bringing in all these new ideas, and it’s been a really exciting time for the company.
We’re trying to evolve and maintain our core values, but still bringing into play all the things that matter, like AI and whatever is appropriate. Those are the sorts of things we’re doing.
We’ve always been sort of slow and steady, like the tortoise and the hare …
What do you think will happen to the market in 2026?
There’s a lot of discussion that there will be some more interest rate cuts, maybe two more this year and maybe three more next year, which may inspire mortgage rates to come down further, which could be helpful.
If that happens, it will be a positive for housing. And if the Fed can get the job situation under control — we don’t want to keep slowing into a bad place — if you can get that under control and keep inflation down, then we could have a really good market next year.
But I think the concern out there is the uncertainty about, is a recession looming? All the signs are sort of looking like it, some economists are saying. So I hope that’s not the case. I really have trust in the decisions the Fed is making and I hope that we can avoid that.
However, we’ve been through bad markets before — post-COVID, the global financial crisis, 9/11 — you name it, we’ve been through so many different challenges — and people continue to buy and sell, so we’ll be there to help them through that process regardless of whether it’s a bull or a bear market. So we’re just going to keep chugging along here.
