When Clients Call One Agent: Lessons from Leaders in Luxury 2026
11/04/2026
Leaders in Luxury 2026 brought Institute members to Hotel ZaZa in Austin on October 11–12. The sessions covered a wide range, from housing economics and AI search to workflow automation, listing strategy and neighborhood marketing. But they kept returning to one question: when a client decides whom to hire, what makes you the agent they call?
The answer matters because most clients never shop around. NAR's 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers found that 80% of sellers contacted only one agent before hiring. They call the name they already know, or the one a referral or an AI tool points them to. Five lessons from the event show how to become that name.
1. The market is smaller, but more of it is seven figures
Dr. Jessica Lautz, Deputy Chief Economist and Vice President of Research at the National Association of REALTORS®, presented "A New Era of Home Buyers Is Here." Existing-home sales have hovered around 4 million a year since 2023, the lowest level since 1995. Yet homes selling for $1 million or more rose from 1.61% of sales in 2015 to 8.08% in 2025.
Lautz's price data suggests appreciation explains part of that rise, rather than a wave of new wealthy buyers alone. Either way, seven-figure sales are now about one in every 12 transactions nationally, so more agents, including many in feeder markets, are likely to handle them.
The buyer has changed too. First-time buyers fell to a record-low 21% of purchases, with a median age of 40. Among repeat buyers, 30% paid all cash. Only 24% of buyers had children under 18 at home, and sellers had owned for a median of 11 years, the longest on record.
These are national figures, but they suggest useful questions. Your next seller may be a long-tenured owner with substantial equity. Your next buyer may be more likely to pay cash, and less likely to have children at home, than the standard playbook assumes. Use the patterns to ask better questions, not to make assumptions about any one client.
2. When clients call one agent, AI may shape who that is
Andrew Hong, founder of Tobe Agency, showed what happens when that one call is filtered through AI. In Veterans United's second-quarter 2026 survey, 45% of prospective buyers said they had used AI to help buy a home.
Hong walked through an audit of a Gulf Coast team with more than 40 years in one market and over $390 million in career sales. Asked six real buyer and seller questions about that market, AI recommended six agents, each with a reason, such as "best for $1M to $10M waterfront." The team didn't appear in any answer, even though several of the agents who did close less volume. As Hong's slide put it: "AI didn't pick the biggest producers. It picked the clearest specialists."
In his diagnosis, the problem was corroboration. AI weighs what you say about yourself against what it can confirm elsewhere: reviews, portals, rankings, press and directories. This team's 1996-era website still named a brokerage that no longer exists, and the team had three Google reviews to a competitor's 40-plus.
That matters even for agents who don't want AI-generated leads. A referral who already has your name may ask AI whether you're any good, which makes AI your reference check. Hong's first fix is basic: your name, office address and phone number should match everywhere, from Zillow and Google to your brokerage bio and your Find-A-Member profile. Hong said The Institute comes up often in his audits as a source AI checks.
3. Specific beats big
Hong's workshop had attendees write the one sentence AI should say about them: named neighborhoods, the clients they serve, one fact AI can check and one belief it can repeat. "Serving Greater Los Angeles and the Westside" gives AI little to work with. "I've represented 30 buyers and sellers in Brentwood in 10 years" does. His rule for defining an audience: describe the people behind your last 10 closings, not the clients you wish you had.
Dakoda Collins of REAL Marketing applied the same logic offline. He made the case for farming a defined neighborhood, or even a single condo building, with a monthly market report built on community-specific sales data. The idea is that the same message reaches the same audience month after month, until you're the agent people connect with that place.
Matthew Ferrara put it as "not more business, the right business." He showed how a steady pace of two listing appointments a week can compound into more than 40 transactions a year.
A narrow, clearly stated focus makes an agent easier for AI to recommend, easier for a neighbor to remember and easier for a referral partner to describe. Being everywhere is not the same as being known for something.
4. Delegate the busywork, not the judgment
Rick Janson is a Denver luxury agent, a member of The Institute's GUILD™ and the author of four books on AI. He targeted the "time vampires" that eat a luxury agent's day: the inbox, follow-up, seller updates, content and video. Agentic AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude Cowork can now complete tasks, not just answer questions. To use them well, define the outcome, the sources, the boundaries and where the finished work should be saved.
Three habits ran through his sample assignments:
- Draft, don't send. Replies and outreach are saved for your review.
- The reason comes from the record. Follow-up should rest on a documented decision date or open commitment, not on days since your last call. As his slide put it, "Message volume alone says little about relationship quality."
- Keep facts and claims apart. Seller statements stay separate from verified property facts.
His listing-audit example compared the website for one of his own listings with its MLS remarks. One described two full kitchens and a mini bar; the other said three kitchens. The AI's job is to flag the conflict, and the agent decides which is right. For a luxury listing, that check can be worth more than another round of polished copy.
5. The relationship is still the real "AI"
Later in his session, Ferrara argued that technology works best behind the scenes. He cited a 2024 Washington State University study in the Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, which found that describing a product as using "artificial intelligence" lowered consumers' intent to buy it. With luxury clients, AI should sharpen your service, not headline your marketing.
His version of "AI" stands for "Always Inspiring": staying in touch with your sphere through messages that feel like time well spent. Lautz's data backs his case for the agent's value. In NAR's latest profile, 88% of buyers and 91% of sellers used an agent, and the seller figure ties the record high.
What to do before 2027
The practical takeaways are simple to state:
- Check how you appear beyond your own website, starting with your Institute Member profile.
- Put your focus in writing by naming the neighborhoods and clients you serve.
- Hand one recurring task, such as a weekly seller update, to AI, with clear boundaries.
If you'd like to be in the room next year, join the Leaders in Luxury 2027 waitlist to hear first when details are announced.