The Future of Real Estate Depends on How We Lead
In a year of record-breaking transactions and rising property values, one statistic should give the real estate industry pause: according to brokerage analytics firm Relitix in 2023, nearly half of newly licensed agents in the U.S. didn’t close a single deal. This isn’t a side effect of market volatility or post-pandemic adjustment—it’s a sign of deeper structural failure. When 50 percent of your new recruits vanish within twelve months, recruiting more agents isn’t a growth strategy—it’s a slow bleed on your business.
For years, brokerages operated on a simple premise: the more agents you add, the more deals you’ll close. But that logic no longer holds in today’s market. Scale without support doesn’t create growth—it creates churn. What’s missing isn’t drive or technology. It’s leadership—leadership capable of developing talent, embedding tools into practice, and building the kind of performance culture where agents succeed by design, not by chance.
From file police to performance coaches
Brokers themselves know the old model is faltering. In Delta Media Group’s 2024 Leadership Outlook survey, 65 percent of respondents listed agent recruitment as their top challenge, followed by shrinking margins and poor adoption of brokerage technology. Each of these points leads back to the same issue: a management culture that treats agents as independent contractors to be monitored rather than professionals to be developed.
Today’s high-performing agents expect more. They want the kind of goal setting, feedback, and performance coaching standard in other sales-driven industries. Yet many brokerage managers are still functioning as compliance officers—checking paperwork and enforcing minimums—without the coaching mindset or skill set required to actually develop a team.
Technology is racing ahead of leadership capacity
The leadership gap becomes even more apparent when it comes to technology. PropTech investment continues to surge—more than $4.3 billion was raised in the first half of 2024 alone, even as broader venture funding cooled. Predictive pricing tools, AI-driven lead scoring, automated transaction management platforms—these are no longer fringe innovations. They’re standard features for any brokerage hoping to attract serious agents.
But technology only creates value if it’s adopted. And adoption only happens when someone in the leadership structure is responsible for integrating tools into daily workflows. When software becomes shelfware, the cost isn’t just financial—it’s strategic. It signals to your team that the firm invests in tools but not in outcomes. That gap is no longer technical; it’s managerial. A brokerage’s tech stack is only as good as its usage. And usage is a leadership issue.
A consultative playbook: the Elite Merit example
At Elite Merit, we chose to reframe the agent’s role from transaction closer to strategic advisor. Every conversation begins with why—not just what kind of property a client wants, but why that property, in that neighborhood, at this moment in their life.
This deeper inquiry helps uncover factors clients often miss: cross-border financing challenges, resale timelines, school access, long-term investment potential. By surfacing these dimensions early, agents provide clarity, reduce risk, and guide buyers toward better long-term outcomes.
Internally, this consultative approach boosts trust and repeat business. It’s also central to our broader mission: to create accessible educational platforms that demystify the legal and financial dimensions of real estate, making the market more transparent for everyone involved.
When you train agents to think like advisors, clients become more informed—and loyalty deepens.
Dubai’s real estate sector has no shortage of ambition, capital, or clients. But the next phase of sustainable growth will come not from adding agents, but from empowering them.
Brokerages that make the shift—from oversight to enablement, from transactions to training, from volume to value—are already seeing stronger margins and longer client lifetime value. Those that don’t, risk becoming training grounds for their better-managed competitors.
The real estate industry has all the tools and all the talent it needs. What it lacks—and what Dubai now urgently demands—is a new generation of broker-leaders ready to coach, to implement, and to lead.
