Hello, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the next session here. We heard from some good sessions from Jade on the CRE side earlier today. We are going to be switching over the topic to the residential side. So today we are joined by Ryan Schneider from Anywhere Real Estate. Anywhere is a leading real estate services company with business lines in franchise, brokerage, relocation, title and settlement, and mortgage. It is home to over 320,000 affiliated agents globally, including 185,000 here in the US. Its diverse portfolio of brands include well-known names in real estate, including Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Corcoran, ERA, and Sotheby's. It generated $5.6 billion in revenues last year and accounted for roughly 12% market share among existing home sale transaction volumes in the U.S. So with that background, let me turn it over to Ryan for some introductory remarks, and, Ryan, thank you for joining us. Well, Tommy, thank you for having us. It's awesome to be here, and thanks to everybody who's watching and listening in on this. Appreciate you investing the time in our company. Tommy, we are the leading residential real estate firm, not just a leading one. And we're really excited to be here. You know, it's a wild time in residential real estate, with the combination of a pretty tough macro environment anchored in high mortgage rates and an incredibly low number of unit transactions, combined with a lot of the uncertainty in the market around litigation that's affected the whole industry. But you know, even with those two tough places, I'm really excited about our position here at Anywhere Real Estate to drive value for our shareholders going forward. On both a macro basis and a litigation basis, we think we've got some advantages as this world plays forward, in particular, the financial octane, as the housing market comes back, anchored in the work we've done to increasingly make our company even more efficient and drive more revenue growth in our company, as well as the leading position we took as the first one to settle the industry litigation. That's given us a head start working for much longer, preparing our agents and franchisees for the changes that are to come, that we think can help us win relative to others. So I think we're in a good position to capitalize when the housing market comes back, generate a lot of financial octane. I think we're also benefiting from a better competitive environment. We really have been focused primarily on what we can control, given that those two big factors I mentioned are things that really affect everybody. That really starts with investing in our business, growing our high-margin franchise business, growing our industry-leading luxury position, and leveraging the fact that we're really the only player with national brokerage title mortgage together, that can create both incremental economics and a better transaction experience for agents and customers. I'm proud of how our team is leading through these pretty tough times in residential real estate, and I look forward to delivering on our agenda and watching it translate into, you know, top and bottom line results, especially as the housing market improves going forward. Thanks for that. Just a reminder to the audience, if you want to submit any questions, you can do so through the webcast, and we'll be monitoring through that throughout the session here. So Ryan, I do wanna start. I always appreciate the timing of this event to get some face time with you, just because the spring housing market is hopefully, you know, in full swing. We did see an existing home sales number this morning of about 4.1 million. That was a little bit below expectations. But what are some early trends that you can point to, and how is that shaping your expectations for the health of housing this spring and into the summer? Yeah. Well, you know, look, we're taking kind of a show me approach until we see something different happen in the market, which is why we're so focused on really improving the efficiency of our company, watching our cash flow, watching our capital very, very closely here. Because as you cited, the market's pretty tough out there. You know, you know, while we've seen a little bit of an improvement in our book, when we look at, say, our April numbers were up about 6% over last year, you know, it isn't a meaningful improvement from that 4.1 million units that the economy saw last year, and that, you know, today, you saw the report that you just mentioned. So, you know, overall, unfortunately, the macro is a little bit more stuck, and the housing market a little bit more stuck in this kind of low trough kind of position. I have no doubt it will come back over time, driven by demographics or as, you know, rates either normalize or drop. But, it's pretty challenging out there. You know, a couple things I would share with you: one is demand is much higher than supply. Supply is totally the problem. Everyone knows this. You know, people have such low mortgage rates, they're locked into their houses, such that even when, you know, homes come on the market now, even at 7% mortgage rates, you know, prices are up at 90%+ of the country. So demand is outweighing supply. Luxury is doing better, and we like that, 'cause we have the leading luxury business in our industry. You know, we're seeing more growth and share gain in luxury as a company. You know, we saw listings grow about 3% in our overall portfolio, but we saw our luxury listings grow about 15% year-over-year in our portfolio, and so there is some variation happening there that is a benefit to us as a company. But it, you know, it remains pretty challenging out there. But, you know, we generated meaningful EBITDA and free cash flow last year, even in this pretty challenging environment. We continue to get even more efficient as a company and, you know, build up the, the potential for more Financial Octane when the market comes back. So, you know, we wanna continue our profitable approach, and we like our ability to navigate this one and, you know, gain share in luxury like we've been doing, and get even more efficient as a company. Yeah, your average price point does skew luxury. But if we kind of go across the brands that I kind of outlined earlier, it does run the gamut in terms of the various price points. So you do see both ends of the market, and even middle market, including that. So how big is the dichotomy between the luxury outperforming and middle or kind of lower-end markets underperforming? And then also maybe think about that in the context of the big coastal, you know, urban city centers, New York, San Francisco, versus maybe what I'll call second-tier cities. How are they all performing? Yeah, look, so, you know, all parts of the market are down, right? And, you know, when you've got 4 million unit home sales, it's just. It's affecting everything. So everybody, every part of the market is down, but we are seeing luxury, both in our book, you know, especially perform better than the other parts. You know, in part because luxury, bluntly, is less exposed to mortgages, right? A lot more cash buyers, you know, in luxury. You get the second home thing happening there. And so we see, you know, better performance there in our book, in the listings, et cetera. Part of the reason the middle market is so tough, and that includes in some of our awesome brands, you know, like CENTURY 21 or, or ERA or others, is the entry-level home is the place where the supply issues are the toughest, right? There's just incredibly low supply of home, and even the homes that are being built, you know, tend to skew not entry level these days. And so, you know, part of the reason it's so difficult there is the biggest supply constraints. And then, you know, we don't really see a first-tier versus second-tier city phenomenon, as much as more we see a regional phenomenon. And it won't surprise anybody. You know, the markets in Florida, and the Southeast, and Texas continue to show strength. You know, California and New York had struggled. Now they've done better here in 2024 than they were doing in 2023, but they've had a little bit of a harder time. And then a few of the, you know, hottest markets in the Colorado, Idahos have cooled a little bit. But the regional trend is really kind of overwhelmed the first versus second city kind of tier trends. Okay. We have been surprised to see home prices hold up as well as they have, despite, you know, it seems like affordability continuing to wane. Is there a scenario that you envision where home prices nationally do decline in the near or intermediate term? Obviously it's a factor of, you know, demand versus supply dynamics, with so much perhaps inventory waiting on the sidelines to sell. But what is the scenario where home prices, you know, maybe do decline? I'm not sure I see a lot of scenarios where home prices decline, bluntly. I mean, it is so striking, again, that even at 7% mortgage rates, which aren't that historically crazy when you go back to the 1990s, and, you know. You know, I remember kind of when I was a first-time home buyer. But now they feel very different. But, you know, there is so much demand just driven by the demographics of household formation, you know, and the number of people who want homes, that it's still overwhelming, you know, and, and driving up prices because of that limited supply. I struggle to see prices going down because of the demand-supply imbalance. One question I've gotten is, you know, "If there's a bit of a recession or something, is that gonna be bad for housing?" It's actually probably not, 'cause that. You know, if something brings down rates a bit, bluntly, it probably brings more supply on, and there's a lot of demand still, and it'll help affordability if rates come down a bit. That's more of the kind of scenario where then I would see prices would stabilize. But we just don't have a lot of examples of really prices dropping even in, you know, some of these affordability challenged time. And look, I'm not against prices dropping if units go up, right? It would be a healthier market if we had more unit sales and lower prices. Like, I'm totally for that. But, you know, when you look at these supply-demand dynamics, I think the more natural equilibrium probably is for prices to stop rising as units go up, and maybe less odds that they actually drop. Mm-hmm. Okay. And so it sounds like tough market, you know, today, uncertain outlook going forward. What's the competitive landscape like then for you, in terms of going out there and recruiting agents and, you know, other brokerages competing with you, and you trying to retain your agents? Yeah. We've seen a lot of shifts in the competitive landscape over the last, you know, call it five to seven years. Where does it stand today? Yeah. Well, look, you know, it is a tough market out there, Tommy, but like I said in my opening remarks, I'm proud of the fact that, you know, we're still able, in a tough market, to generate meaningful EBITDA and free cash flow, and that's, you know, not true in almost the whole rest of the industry, bluntly. And so, you know, we're gonna stay focused on that, stay focused on improving our costs, and, you know, build the financial octane for even better markets out there. And, you know, the competitive dynamics is a part of that. You know, it is definitely in a better spot than it was a few years ago, especially for those of us who, you know, believe in kind of profitable growth, not just growth for growth's sake. And so, you know, we like our agent retention. Our franchisee retention is awesome. Our agent retention is. It's not at all-time highs, but it's pretty close. And, you know, we are seeing other people have to pull back more financially, given some of the financial pressures out there that are out there. So, so we like our, our results and, you know, we like the people who are joining us in this time. I think, you know, there's a bit of a flight to quality. You know, we had record year of franchise sales that ended 15 months ago, when this stuff got really tough. We had a bigger, very good year in 2023, so we see a bit of a flight to quality on the franchise sales side. I think we're seeing some of that on the agent side, and those are things that, you know, there's not that much financial impact for them in 2024, in part 'cause the housing market is so rough. But, you know, you get back to a normal housing market, and we're gonna, you know, print a lot of money from those things that we've been doing, even on the revenue side here during this downturn, as well as on the cost side. And then, you know, we're still able to invest. You know, we're gonna, you know, spend $50 million-$60 million of CapEx this year. That's down from more like $100 million, probably, in normal markets. But, you know, we've got competitors who are spending, like, zero on CapEx, and, and I think agents and franchisees see that we're still investing for the future, and that's investing in them. You know, we're launching new ventures, like Upward Title, to help our affiliates, you know, access title economics and help us access and grow our title business. And so, it's still intense competitively, but it's not crazy like it's been sometimes in the past. And we're trying to take advantage of it to, you know, build revenue octane as well as cost octane, even while it's, you know, raining pretty hard out there in the industry. Mm-hmm. Maybe to zoom in on the, maybe the single number that I think, you know, well represents the competitive environment, is the commission split number that you guys report within your brokerage business. Yeah. So back in 2017, that split was around 70% of, you know, gross commissions that came in or paid out to agents. You know, last year, it had grown 10%, up to around 80%. Can you walk through, you know, what were the drivers of that change over the past, you know, six or seven years? And then secondly, is, is the upward pressure now fully behind us, you think? Yeah, you know, that, that is probably the number one macro issue for our industry. And if you look at all the public companies' numbers, you'll see increases of the type that you talked about, and we actually still tend to be the lowest on those, on that number, even at our 80%, relative to other people. You know, sadly, the biggest driver of that was just, you know, kind of what I would consider, you know, people willing to accept low or negative margin, right? You know, creating a competitive environment where, you know, you had to make some of those choices, economically. And, you know, we went through time periods where we were willing to let people walk because, you know, just we weren't gonna make unprofitable offers. We're gonna always make sure we're focused on profitability and profitable growth. But, you know, you've had some times in the market where that's been a real driver. It has been interesting to kind of watch things plateau a bit in the last kind of year or two, and some of that's the down market, some of that's the competitive environment, and in our case, I always say half of it's the market, half of it's actually actions we've been taking, you know, on our value proposition. And so, you know, you can kind of see our numbers have kind of plateaued around the place you talked about. They were even down a little bit in Q1 on a year-over-year basis. And then, you know, in luxury, we actually have seen our commissions go down year over year in the last... Since, like, 2022, in one of our brands. You know, that I haven't seen any competitor who's ever had that happen. And so, you know, we like what we're doing to kind of create as good a balance as we can on the economics there, but boy, that was and is a tough one. You know, and it gets back to the competitive environment, but it also gets back to our value proposition that, again, is resonating across different brands. And, you know, being disciplined as a management team, you know, that you want profitable growth. 'Cause unfortunately, this is not an industry where you can, you know, you know, lose money on an agent this year and make it up on them the next year, because they're independent contractors. They can leave that next year kind of thing. So we're staying disciplined and, you know, that's why I think we can keep distinguishing ourselves from a profitability and free cash flow generation standpoint. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the last thing on splits, I guess, you know, I think what a misunderstood notion about splits, and I've admittedly been guilty of thinking this, is that there—if there is a recovery in home sale, home sale volumes, then that would result in all agents simply just moving up their commission ladders with those incremental transactions that they're doing, and that in and of itself would lead to significantly more upward pressure on your overall splits that you report. That's not exactly the case from, you know, some of the conversations that we've had. So, what can you share about the- Yeah puts and takes that actually will drive changes in the splits over the next few years? Yeah, I mean, fortunately or unfortunately, the biggest thing probably is the competitive environment. You know, I would say about 50% of our book is on fixed rates that, you know, aren't gonna flex up as the economy goes up, and they didn't flex down as things went down. So it's not like our improvement recently is just the macro kind of, you know, helping us on those 50% of the people. You know, I think the competitive environment is a, you know, remains a meaningful thing, and I think, you know, hopefully, one of the benefits of this downturn or this challenge in time is that, you know, it forces more financial discipline across the industry. You know, the other thing, though, is the value proposition, right? You know, the agents are, I think, most concerned about their bottom line, not their split. You know, to the extent that, you know, things like the Sotheby's International Realty, you know, global referral network does more business than, you know, many public brokerages do alone, you know, it really helps from a brand standpoint, and a recruiting and a retention and an economic kind of, you know, standpoint. You know, bringing in, you know, new, you know, lead generation sources for those folks that are high quality, that are not just web leads, those kind of things help. So, a lot of what, you know, we're focused on during this tough part of the market is continue to invest to improve the value proposition. 'Cause we don't wanna compete on price, right? Who wants to compete on price? It's the worst way to compete, right? And we, we just don't want to. And so enhancing the value proposition and having those proof points, you know, that we're seeing in this market, you know, with, again, you know, you know, commissions going down in one of our brands, commissions kind of plateauing, kind of from a whole portfolio level, that, that, that feels good to us, because it, it shows that, you know, we're having success without having to compete on price. Mm-hmm. Yeah, let's switch over to a different topic here, thinking about some of the business practice changes that have come out from some of the litigation across the industry. So we've seen various settlements from, you know, your own that you struck to NAR's, to other brokerages, all broadly agreeing to a number of business practice changes that are set to be implemented. Do you think the industry is on track to have those fully instituted and in practice by this summer? Let's just start there. I think it's gonna be tough. And you know, I mean, I think there were two things stand out on all the practice. So one is that offers of compensation to buyer agents are not banned. I think that was big here, you know, that existed in a lot of places, and that didn't happen, and that's a good thing, I think, for our industry. It's good for agents. I think it's good for customers, by the way. It's good for sellers and buyers. So that's something that, you know, a lot of people were watching for and did not happen in these things. The other biggest change is the mandatory buyer agreements. And I'm for it, like, we're for it. And we actually think we're gonna do well with this, in part because of us settling our litigation back in September. We've been working on this, you know, now for about nine months. I think most people started working on this about a month or two ago after NAR settled. And so, you know, we think our agents are gonna go into a buyer agreement world with, you know, some real advantages in terms of the training, the best practices, the learning from other parts of the company. And a lot of the negotiation that probably is gonna happen with buyer agreements is the kind of thing that already happens a lot in the luxury world, where we're seeing a lot of learnings that we can export to all of our folks. So, you know, we're feeling good about our position and ability to actually, hopefully, you know, capture some opportunities in this. But, you know, the word I always use is uncertainty. Because there are, you know, MLS rules and how things are gonna work that aren't even written yet, here in May, for something that's supposed to be implemented in August. And so I think between now and August, it's gonna be a race to see if this industry can be, quote, "ready," but it's also gonna be a race to figure out, you know, any nuances and... You know, and I think there'll have to be some continuous improvement. I have a suspicion some stuff's gonna get written down, and we're gonna find the industry will wanna change it, just because it's not meeting the spirit of the settlement or, you know, it doesn't work for the consumer, or something like that. So it's gonna be a summer of uncertainty on that. We will be more than ready as a company and have a relative advantage against, I think, everybody else, given how we handled the litigation, including getting a, you know, a much better settlement on a comparable, you know, metrics basis, but also in being prepared for this stuff. But I think the industry as a whole, it's gonna be a nail biter. Yeah. Tend to agree. The manner in which the media, and including mainstream media, I remember seeing the Good Morning America segment on this topic, you know, generally reporting that around the NAR verdict and the settlement, it's all been interesting to watch. And from my perspective, you know, it has been somewhat oversimplified to the headline, Broker fees will be reduced starting this summer. It's not as simple as that. You know, how are you training your agents to respond to what I suspect is more buyers and sellers reaching out to agents and saying, you know, they want the reduced fees that they've heard about on the news? How do you go about that? Well, the news cycle was interesting, and Tommy, just to give your profession even a hard time, you know, some of a nd I don't think you did this, by the way, but there were a few analyst reports that came out, like, on a Friday, about the settlement, and then kind of got rewritten on a Monday, that kind of pulled back from that, just like some of the headlines may have been a little overstated. And at one point, you even saw a little bit of backlash in the media, of people saying, Wait, this thing didn't go far enough, because it was, you know, overstated in what people thought. Anyway, you know, so, but we're through that. What I would tell you is two things. One is, you know, consumers don't live this the way we do, right? And so what I hear from my agents is, increasing consumer questions on this stuff is actually quite correlated to what's on the front page of the newspaper or what's on the Good Morning America segment. And so it kind of goes in waves. They heard about it for a few days, then they haven't heard about it much, then they hear about it again. So it's much less top of mind maybe than it is for us, is one thing. The second thing is, you know, we learn from our agents as much as we teach them, right? Because I know, I remember after the after the NAR settlement, I spoke to one of our great agents in Boulder, Colorado, and she told me about the conversation she had with four sellers and how well they went, and she said, Here's what I said to them. And that's a great teaching thing we can share with, you know, hundreds or thousands of other agents. But we've got, you know, tons of great agents having those conversations, and so, you know, we are kind of, everybody does business their own way, and every consumer is different, but, you know, we've been talking with our agents and franchisees about how to go forward in a more buyer agreement world with more of these questions since September. And I think we're going have. Our folks are gonna be better prepared than the average people in our industry, because of our focus on this, and because of that kind of scale we have to share some of these best practices. I think our agents are gonna do well. I think they add a lot of value, and, you know, being an unrepresented buyer is a pretty tough road. And so I'm, you know, I remain optimistic, and I believe in our agents. Mm-hmm. Do you have any data on, you know, the number of agents that you have that are already implementing, you know, mandatory buyer representation agreements, and if there has been any pushback from buyers balking when they were kind of approached with that agreement and, you know, forgoing representation? Yeah. Is it, is it still too early to tell? Yeah, I mean, I think it's too... Well, let me give you two answers. In terms of the new world, it's too early. I mean, I have anecdotes, and none of them are bad. You know, I ran into one of my employees in the lunchroom, you know, earlier this month, who told me she wanted to go look at a house, and one of our franchisee's agents handed her a buyer agreement, you know, for that, and she looked at it, thought it looked good, she signed it, and they went on, kind of thing. And so, we haven't heard a lot of the negative stories. But the other thing I would tell you is, you know, buyer agreements aren't new, right? I mean, we already have them in about 20 markets, or 20 states, excuse me, Tommy, and they're actually either required or kind of commonplace in, let's call it, 15 states. You know, Washington State made them mandatory effective January 1st of this year. I remember signing a buyer's agreement in Northern Virginia in, you know, in 2007, when I moved there with Capital One. And so, you know, we have a subset of our business that is already familiar with using buyer agreements. Again, either because the state or an MLS requires them or they're kind of custom. And so, you know, one of the things we've been able to do is, you know, share the experiences of people in those markets with people in other markets where buyer's agreements are gonna be a totally new thing. So those are a couple things, but it's too early, really, 'cause, again, there is the uncertainty thing. But, you know, I haven't seen anything anecdotally that is, you know, has got me worried more than the general risk management you would want me to have about, you know, industry changes. Mm-hmm. And what about buyers perhaps, you know, seeing that buyer agent agreement and seeing, you know, a number very clearly outlined in there, whether it be a percentage or a fixed dollar amount, and saying, "Maybe I'm gonna go shop around"? You know, you hear most financial advisors recommend getting at least three quotes for a mortgage rate. Is that happening with agent representation more, you think? Well, I think it can vary. It hasn't happened yet, that's for sure. I don't think that happens. I mean, people shop around, and they should, but it's not driven by buyer agreements. You know, I think you're simplifying what buyer agreements are likely to look like, right? Because, you know, one competitor put out a buyer agreement for home touring that has no fee stuck in that, right? So they don't all have numbers, you know. You know, I can write a buyer agreement, Tommy, for you to bid on, you know, if you wanna buy the home at, you know, 43 Green Avenue, we can write a buyer agreement for that, and I can put the seller's offer of compensation in, if it's, y ou know, if there, assuming there is one, and obviously I need to find out what it is, which isn't that hard to do. And so, you know, you know, how these things get written and, you know, whether they're just, like, for a one-time tour of a home, a single home they wanna work with an agent on, or, like, a six-month, "I wanna work with you for six months on an exclusive basis," those will be all kinds of probably different agreements, and the economic terms can be pretty different in them. And that's one of the places where, again, this uncertainty of how the ecosystem's gonna operate still needs to be worked out. But, you know, we sure haven't yet seen the kind of thing you're asking about, but that's more because I don't think we've gotten to that world yet. Mm-hmm. Okay. And then last thing on this point, is there any data out there suggesting that, you know, less buyers or sellers are, you know, using professional representation and deciding to go it alone? I don't know if the- Yeah ... you know, the tools out there- Yeah ... have made perhaps the process easier, but it does still remain a highly complex process. Yeah. So what is the data around that? Well, the data's actually the opposite. If you look at the data over time, more people have been using agents recently than ever. And that's, by the way, also true for, like, you know, the newer generation of people who were raised in a total digital world. And it gets to, I think, the issue that, you know, buying or selling a home is incredibly difficult.... It is a rare transaction you don't do very often, and it's very complex, and it's very high dollar, and, you know, mistakes can be pretty deadly. I thought Realtor.com did a nice ad out there that basically listed, "Here's all the things you need to do if you wanna buy a home and you wanna do it on your own. or alternatively, you can work with a Realtor who can help you with all that stuff," kind of thing. Just because it's a complex thing, and so we've seen the unrepresented buyers stay, pretty constant. You know, in our book, I think it's around 4% or 5% of buyers are unrepresented, and that number has been pretty constant over the past 10 years. I don't wanna put a number on it, 'cause I don't have it exactly at my fingertips, but definitely, you know, in this decade, it's kind of been hanging out around there. And that's just... Again, that's looking at the Anywhere Real Estate transactions, 'cause we can see who's represented and who's unrepresented, and all that kind of stuff. So it's been pretty constant, but, you know, watching trends in unrepresented buyers is a really important thing, and, you know, we're, you know, we believe in our agents, and but we'll be watching that number, you know, pretty closely. To clarify, is the 4%, you're both, you're saying when you or Anywhere agent either represents the buyer or seller, the other side is unrepresented? Uh, yes. Okay. That is the number. I should really look it up here, but I won't have time in the middle of our call. Yeah, it's, it's four, it's 4%. I think, I think it's actually for just the transactions where we're the sellers. In fact, it is. For the transactions where we are selling, 4% of the buyers are unrepresented, or 5%, or 4%-5% are unrepresented. Like, you know, you know, that's not a number that we're gonna disclose regularly or, or anything else, and, you know, my, my team can, can, can clean that up if I'm a little bit off. But, I believe it's just for the transactions where we are doing the selling, we're on the listing side, so then we see who the buyer is, you know, and who the buyer has as an agent or doesn't have an agent, and it's been constant at around, you know, 4%-5% unrepresented. Mm-hmm. And only because, I guess, we brought this up, is it possible for the selling, the listing agent to charge more if the buyer does not have representation? I almost think it's you're dealing with an- Yeah ... unprofessional on the other side- Yeah ... so it's a tougher transaction, or is that not a feasible solution? That is actually a hypothesis that I've said publicly when, you know, you see these headlines that talk about real estate commissions, you know, getting cut in half or something, you know, you know, I think if the world evolves to a place where there are more unrepresented buyers, right, I could easily see a good selling agent, and I've heard this from them, saying, I'm probably gonna charge, you know, more, if I have to deal with, you know, a much larger number of unrepresented buyers. So I think that hypothesis is possible. I don't, you know, I don't know if it'll come to fruition. It would require probably the world to have a lot more unrepresented buyers than we see today. But I have said that thing myself, and part of the reason I've said it is, you know, some of my best agents have said that's probably the approach that they would take. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how the market forces play out. You did mention realtor.com, and it kind of reminded me of a different line of questioning. There is a new entrant to the residential portal arena here in the U.S. You know, Homes.com is looking to compete with Zillow, realtor.com, and Redfin, among others. Can you talk about any of the implications, if any, for that increased competition among the- Yeah ... portals for, and how it impacts a brokerage like Anywhere? Yeah, look, it's good for us, I believe, and it's good for the industry, and it's not good for us because these people are our friends. You know, you know, the Zillow, realtor.com, Homes.com of the world, you know, I've got a lot of respect for them. You know, I'll joke with their CEOs that we're kind of frenemies, because they're also competing with us, right? And I've actually said out loud, and this is before Homes.com entered, and Damian Eales took over at realtor.com, that, you know, I actually in many ways worry that Zillow is the biggest threat to brokerages, much more than any of my brokerage competitors, and I spend a ton of time thinking about it. So that aside, I think more competition in the portal space with a Homes.com, a realtor.com, a Zillow, I think it's good for brokerages like ourselves because they have to spend more time competing with each other versus competing with me, and just in terms of a management, time, and distraction thing. I think it's good for my agents and franchisees to have more choices and better choices. Now, again, I want my agents and franchisees to get all their services from me, right? I want them to spend their money with me, and I wanna support them 100%, right? But if they are gonna go out of our ecosystem to procure things, I want them to have more choices, and I want there to be more competition, and I want them to have better products. So I just think the more competition thing is a good thing, even if we should all be really clear that none of these, you know, portals, you know, are in it to help a brokerage, right? And you know, we're in the ecosystem together, so we all going to live on the savanna together and sometimes cooperate and sometimes not. But that competition that Homes.com is bringing, I think is good for portal industry competition. I think it's good for brokerages, and if it leads to better options for my agents, I'm supportive of it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, obviously a lot of concentration on the portals, and it makes sense that that's the case. On the brokerage side, in the space that you play in, it's a pretty fragmented market. You have a good market share, leading market share, but what do you see for the potential of consolidation among brokerages? And do you think that just happens at, you know, the smaller, localized level, or do you see large national, regional players, you know, also participating in consolidation? I think it's inevitable. I think, large players, including us, will participate in it. I think you see some of it happening organically already. But, you know, I think there are some forces. I think the ability to deliver a good value proposition, whether it's technology investment, lead generation, referrals, building a brand, et cetera, is a scale thing that, you know, only a few of us can do, and I think that's going be—those things will become more important, and it's gonna push other people to look for solutions, that they don't have, especially medium-sized and smaller players. I also think, you know, you know, in a world of, like, the commission pressure you talked about, you know, you know, one of the ways to offset that is to be not just more efficient on cost, but just to be bigger at scale, right? You know, this is a business with pretty high fixed costs, but the marginal revenue can be pretty high, and so, you know, M&A can be helpful to alleviate some of that pressure. Then finally, I don't know what's gonna happen with some of the industry changes. We're obviously scenario planning and watching a lot of things, but, you know, if there is any revenue pressure out there in the market, you know. I mean, you literally have an industry that I think if you add it up, is probably below profitability. There's very few companies that make money the like, like we do in our industry, and if there is additional revenue pressure, I think it's going to force people into more consolidation down the road, and I would suspect we'd be a beneficiary of that. Great. And the last question I'll end on, go back to the Investor Day two years ago. Obviously, a very different world back then, but you did lay out some long-term targets, including the- Yeah ... the $1 billion of EBITDA in 2026. Yeah. You know, who knows what two years from now, now looks like? Yeah. So, I don't want to make you update that specific target, but has anything fundamentally changed in the last two years that would make you either more or less optimistic on that target in a, what I'll call a normalized market? Well, look, it was a terrible time to have it because the month after we had it, rates started to rise dramatically and, you know, the, the housing, w e were at $900 million of EBITDA at that time, right? $1.2 billion wasn't that far away. The housing market, you know, shifted hundreds of millions of dollars from the up to the down in that, including what we had in our forecast on housing. That swamped everything, so I would... I wouldn't, you know, try to true back to that. What I would say is, you know, there, there are three really macro things from our Investor Day. One is, you know, we just built the baseline assumption of the housing market continuing to be about what it was, and it's dropped like, you know, literally from 6 million -4 million units of transactions, so that wipes out a ton of stuff. We put out a $300 million cost goal over four years. We delivered it in two years, and we continue to do more, and that's building financial octane for when the market does come back. And then we put out a series of growth things, like investing more in luxury, title and mortgage, you know, expansion and integration, and we like the results of most of those. Their benefits are getting swamped by the housing market, right? Like, I mean, our luxury share is growing. You know, we're outperforming the market on luxury, but we're still making less money on luxury than we did two years ago 'cause it's a much lower market. Market comes back, we're gonna see those benefits. So, you know, two of the three things that we were kind of anchored to in that projection, I feel pretty good about. The housing market one just blew us away in a lot of ways, but that'll come back in whatever amount. You know, we, you know, we've obviously got a new factor with all this industry uncertainty out of the litigation coming in, and so, you know, at some point, I don't think you should expect that we're gonna go back and true up to that thing really, as much as there'll probably be a day when we just kind of reset where we are, especially after some of these industry changes. But we did put in our earnings call just, you know, to remind people of our Financial Octane, even at this market, and between the cost stuff that we're doing and some of these revenue things that we've been building, we think we've got a real coiled spring, that when the market is kind of more normal, we're gonna look really attractive on both an EBITDA and a Free Cash Flow basis. Especially if you look how we look now relative to other people, imagine what we can look like in a stronger market. So, two of the three we're feeling good about, especially the over-delivery on the cost point. Great. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, we are out of time, so we will have to leave it there. Ryan, thank you. Audience, thank you for joining. And yeah, everyone, have a great day. Thank you, Tommy. Everybody, have a great day. Thank you.