William Raveis Real Estate had humble beginnings as a small operation in 1974 based out of a one-room office over a Fairfield grocery store. Today, the award-winning family-owned real estate business has a presence across the Northeast and expanded into other locations across the country and overseas.
The Shelton-based brokerage closed out 2023 with three acquisition deals involving Molisse Realty Group out of Boston, Jones Group Realtors in Western Massachusetts and Carolina Realty Group serving South Carolina. Chris Raveis, the son of founder William Raveis and the company’s co-owner and president, declined to say if more acquisitions were in the pipeline.
“As a company for 50 years we’ve been in a growth mindset,” Raveis said. “Since we started the business, we’ve always been focused on growth. The acquisition market was not strong over the past few years when the real estate market was really soaring along, whereas now we see opportunities, a lot more than we had over the past five years. We expect to continue that trend. We find there is a lot of great small companies that are now open to discussing that where they weren’t before.”
As for the state of real estate market, Raveis was concerned if the current demand for affordable housing could be met.
“You have a lot of talk around it,” Raveis said. “In Connecticut, certainly Gov. Lamont has prompted government aid to address the affordable housing crisis and there have been some signs of that happening. At the Connecticut Department of Housing, they announced $23.2 million, I believe, to fund hundreds of affordable housing apartments. I know there was a 69-unit development in Norwalk that received $6 million in state funding. It’s not being addressed and solved at the at the pace that it needs to in order to fix it anytime soon.”
He also noted that it was not a problem confined to Fairfield and Westchester counties.
“It’s fairly consistent across the country, the general national headlines that everybody has seen regarding low inventory, rising prices, and strong demand,” he continued. “The issue has been that there are a lot of homeowners who have locked in extremely low mortgage rates in the 2% to 3% range. When the mortgage rates went higher this past year it created a lot less of an incentive to go and find a new house. As the rates come down the demand will start to loosen up which we’re seeing signs of already. There have been people that have decided to stay on the sidelines and not go ahead and purchase that new home, but life always moves forward, people have to continue with their plans. There’s only so long that they can stall.”
Raveis saw a similar pattern emerging in terms of realtors themselves, where young people entering the profession are starting with certain disadvantages compared to senior agents who feel compelled to stay in their current positions.
“Real estate’s a business about trust and relationships,” he said. “The tough part for young people is that they just have not had the opportunity to build those long-term strong relationships with their clients who still trust them to sell that.”
Young people have a valuable edge in technology however, Raveis noted, creating valuable opportunities for mentor/mentee relationships that leverage the advantages of both experience and youth.
He expected those bonds, and realtors in general, to also weather challenges in the form of lawsuits along the lines of the $1.8 billion rulings against the National Association of Realtors (NAR) out of Missouri. That lawsuit resulted in a verdict finding NAR, Keller Williams Realty, and HomeServices of America had conspired to keep commissions high. The defendants have all indicated that they plan to appeal, arguing that the fees involved with commissions were always negotiable, even if rarely negotiated.
“There have been no laws, no judgement on this, and it’s going to be in the appeals courts for many years, so there will not be a final judgement on this for the foreseeable future,” Raveis said, dismissing similar lawsuits recently filed in other states as attempts by attorneys to profit off from legal fees without an actual intent to win. He did not expect the Missouri lawsuit or the others to fundamentally change how commissions work.
“However, it will prompt an adjustment in how realtors conduct business and will bring to light more transparency in how commissions are charged,” he said. “All brokerages and homeowners should know that commissions are always negotiable.”
