United’s Dan Duffy on the ‘perfect storm’: Why positioning, not productivity, will define the next brokerage cycle

For Dan Duffy, CEO of United Real Estate Group, the current market is not defined by disruption alone. It is defined by positioning — years of deliberate preparation colliding with a period of industry upheaval.

“I have never been this excited about the next phase [of our company],” he said. “There’s never been as much opportunity as what’s before us right now  — it’s like a perfect storm.”

HousingWire recently sat down with Duffy for a far-reaching interview about brokerage growth, industry trends and the future of real estate. 

Scaling as a core competency

At the center of strategy for United Real Estate is a capability Duffy describes as “second to none” — the onboarding of large, market share-dominant brokerages and accelerating their growth inside the United platform.

“We have mastered the art of onboarding brokerages that are otherwise incredibly gifted and market-share dominant,” Duffy said.

United’s focus is not small-team tuck-ins. It is step-function growth. “We’re really good at going to 1,000- or 2,000-agent venerable firms and bringing them into the United platform culturally, operationally, financially and technology-wise to accelerate their growth,” he said.

That growth engine, he argues, is fully referenceable. “Did the merger, acquisition or affiliation accelerate your execution against your objectives? And the answer has been ‘yes’ in all respects,” Duffy said.

Crucially, he believes the company has institutionalized the integration process. “The team kicks into motion,” he said, describing cross-functional coordination that escorts affiliates through change management.

That operational muscle was not accidental. “We were unproven,” Duffy acknowledged. But the market slowdown allowed the leadership team to hone its systems and tech stack to build a powerful machine that accelerated growth.

Why productivity isn’t the primary lever

In a margin-compressed environment, many brokerage leaders default to productivity per agent as a North Star. Duffy disagrees.

“To wake up every day and say, ‘We’re going to spend all of our time, energy and resources on driving productivity per agent’ — that is the wrong metric,” he said.

His rationale is rooted in leverage math. “If I said, well, we can onboard another 1,000 agents … what happens to those two things? It’s a big lever,” he said, contrasting network expansion with marginal productivity gains.

Recruiting productive agents into a growing ecosystem, he argues, raises overall output more efficiently than incremental training gains. “The inertial momentum of a company that has more resources … the exhaust gas is that productivity per agent climbs,” Duffy said.

Productivity matters, he said, but as an outcome of ecosystem strength, not a standalone strategy.

Turning M&A back on

After three years of almost exclusively organic growth, United is preparing to reengage its acquisition strategy.

“Organic growth has been solid,” Duffy said. But capital structure constraints and a slow housing market forced a pause.

“We had a pause in our cap stack,” he explained, referencing an investor that sought an exit in a challenging capital markets environment. That pause allowed the firm to tighten up its tech stack and back-end operations in preparation of the next phase of growth once the market came back.

With that resolved and the housing market gaining momentum, the aperture has widened. “We’re turning [M&A] back on in the second half of this year,” Duffy said of large affiliations and acquisitions.

The playbook is straightforward. “Get the cap stack with a private lender,” he said, describing how acquisition capacity scales as EBITDA is added.

The strategy reflects a belief that this moment — defined by consolidation and competitive realignment — is uniquely favorable.

Margin repair and the marketplace

While agents’ incomes have risen due to higher home prices and improved disclosure practices, Duffy sees structural margin erosion at the brokerage level.

“It’s about repairing margin erosion,” he said.

United’s answer is a scaled marketplace model that aggregates agent spending power. The concept is simple; the execution is not.

“What you’re doing is looking at what the agent needs to spend and what they’re spending. Then, determining how can you, because of your scale, give the agent access to what they need in an easy, one-click situation at a discount,” Duffy said.

But subscription tiers, billing complexity and vendor payouts create operational friction. “It’s complicated and not for the faint of heart,” he said.

Still, the economics are compelling. “We did $580,000 last year at roughly 27 points of margin,” Duffy said. The budget this year is “$1.6 million,” with margin expectations holding steady.

For brokers seeking diversified revenue, the marketplace represents a scalable, tech-enabled margin lever.

Competing in a consolidated landscape

The industry’s latest major acquisition — Compass‘s purchase of Anywhere that creates a mega brokerage — has prompted widespread speculation about market-share concentration. Compass has several markets that now have 50% to 80% market-share dominance. Duffy views it differently.

“I love competent, smart competition. It makes us all better,” he said.

He credits large disruptors with stress-testing the brokerage model. He said that Compass’s acquisition of Anywhere; the portals, specifically Zillow; and the 100% commission model have put pressure on the industry to “get better, smarter, faster, for agents and for clients.”

Consolidation, in his view, creates opportunity. “It’s a dislodging moment,” he said. “For the first time in a lot of years, many [brokerage owners] who thought they were going to finish their career with their current affiliation are wondering what other options they may have.”

Even as he acknowledges the scale advantages of national players, Duffy is clear about differentiation. “Many competitors have a different business than we do —fundamentally different,” he said.

United’s positioning, he argues, allows simultaneous success. “Compass could be infinitely successful and we can simultaneously be infinitely successful,” he said.

Never waste a good lull

Duffy recounts advice he once heard during the financial crisis of the late 2000s from the CEO of Cargill at a Future Farmers of America board meeting: “Never waste a good downturn to make the changes you need to make.”

For United, the recent lull provided a “pregnant pause” to rebuild back-office systems and financial integration processes that previously lagged behind front-end onboarding excellence.

That reset, he believes, is what makes this moment different. Integration is no longer the weak link. Capital is aligned. The marketplace is scaling. And large brokerage affiliations are once again on the table.

In Duffy’s framing, the industry is not simply consolidating; it is recalibrating. For brokerages that spent the past decade “skating to where the puck was headed,” the next five years may be less about survival and more about acceleration.