Brokerage Confidence Dropped 25 Points in 12 Months. What That Means for Your Tech Decisions.
Only 15% of brokerage leaders are very optimistic, down from 40%+ in 2023. Here is what shifts when confidence falls.
A year ago, more than 40% of brokerage leaders said they were very optimistic about the market. This year, approximately 15% said the same thing. That is not a dip. That is a shift in how people are running their businesses.
The 2024 State of Real Estate Brokerage Technology Survey, conducted by TotalBrokerage in collaboration with T3 Sixty with over 100 respondents, asked brokerage leaders about their outlook, their concerns, and how they are spending on technology. The numbers tell a clear story: confidence is down, margins are the top worry, and the way brokerages evaluate technology has fundamentally changed.
The confidence picture
Here is where brokerage leaders landed on their full market outlook:
| Outlook | Approximate % of respondents |
|---|---|
| Very Optimistic | ~15% |
| Somewhat Optimistic | ~30% |
| Neutral | ~22% |
| Somewhat Pessimistic | ~20% |
| Very Pessimistic | ~5% |
| Uncertain | ~5% |
Roughly 45% of respondents are somewhere between optimistic and very optimistic. That sounds decent until you compare it to 2023, when the "very optimistic" group alone was above 40%. The confident middle has held, but the strongly confident top has been cut by more than half.
What replaced that confidence is a spread. More people are neutral. More are pessimistic. And a small but real group just said they do not know. That kind of uncertainty is new.
Margins replaced interest rates as the top concern
In our 2023 survey, interest rates dominated. Nearly half of all respondents listed it as a top concern. That made sense at the time. Rates were climbing fast and transactions were falling.
A year later, the concern list has reshuffled. Margins are now the number one worry. Interest rates dropped in the rankings. That tells you something important: brokerage leaders have stopped fixating on the macro environment they cannot control and started focusing on the operational reality they can. The question is no longer "when will rates come down?" It is "how do we stay profitable regardless?"
That is a healthier place to be, honestly. But it requires a different kind of infrastructure than most brokerages have.
When confidence falls, tech spending gets rational
Here is the part that matters for anyone making technology decisions right now.
When optimism is high, brokerages buy tools. They add platforms. They experiment. The ROI math is loose because volume covers a lot of sins. If you are closing enough deals, an extra $500 a month for a tool that might help does not feel like a big decision.
When confidence drops 25 points, that math tightens up fast.
We asked respondents why they changed or would change their technology. The answers were revealing:
| Reason for changing tech | Approximate % |
|---|---|
| Improved functionality | ~45% |
| Cost reduction | ~12% |
| Better integration | ~10% |
| Agent feedback | ~5% |
| Vendor support | ~2% |
Approximately 45% said improved functionality. Not "more features." Functionality. The distinction matters. Brokerages are not looking for tools that do more things. They are looking for tools that do the right things better than what they have now.
Cost reduction came in second at roughly 12%. That is lower than you might expect given the pessimism in the market. But it makes sense. Most brokerages know that cutting a $200/month subscription is not going to save them. What will save them is getting more out of the money they already spend.
Better integration at approximately 10% is also telling. That is a brokerage leader saying: I am tired of my tools not talking to each other. I am tired of re-entering data. I am tired of pulling numbers from four different systems to answer one question.
Spending went up anyway, for some
Here is where it gets interesting. Despite the drop in confidence, approximately 40% of respondents said they increased their technology spending. Roughly 55% did not.
That split is not random. The brokerages increasing spend are not doing it because they are feeling good about the market. They are doing it because they realized their current setup cannot give them what they need to manage through a tighter environment. You cannot cut your way to profitability if you do not even know where the money is going.
This is the same pattern we wrote about in our piece on brokerage profit margins and operational costs. When margins compress, the brokerages that survive are the ones with visibility into their actual numbers, not the ones guessing from spreadsheets.
The real problem is not spending. It is visibility.
Most brokerages cannot answer basic financial questions without hours of manual work. How much did we make last quarter by office? What is our actual cost per transaction? Which agents are profitable and which are not? These are not exotic analytics requests. They are the baseline for running a business.
When confidence is high and volume is strong, you can get away with not knowing. When the market tightens, you cannot. The brokerages in that pessimistic or uncertain camp are feeling the pain of decisions made without data. Not because they are bad operators, but because their systems were never built to give them that data in the first place.
The shift from "let's add tools" to "let's prove what we have works" is rational. But it only works if you have the infrastructure to actually measure what is working. Most brokerages do not. They have a collection of disconnected systems, some spreadsheets, and a finance person who spends half their week reconciling numbers that should be automatic.
What this means for your next 12 months
If you are in the roughly 45% that is still optimistic, good. Use that runway to fix your operational foundation before you need it.
If you are in the neutral or pessimistic camp, the playbook is straightforward:
Stop adding tools that do not connect to anything. Every standalone system you add is another place where data gets stuck and another cost you will question in six months.
Get your financial reporting to a place where you can answer questions in minutes, not days. Profitability by agent, by office, by transaction type. If you cannot pull that right now, that is the gap to close first.
Automate the operational work that eats your staff's time. Commission calculations, compliance reviews, document chasing. Every hour your team spends on manual coordination is an hour they are not spending on the work that actually grows your business.
We covered the expense side of this equation in our post on strategic expense management. The technology side is just as important.
This is what TotalBrokerage was built for
TotalBrokerage is the back-office operating system for residential real estate brokerages. Transactions, commissions, compliance, reporting, e-signatures, and agent management in a single system of record.
When your market confidence drops and every dollar has to justify itself, you need to know exactly what your brokerage is producing. Not next week after someone pulls the numbers together. Right now.
That is what a connected back-office platform gives you. One place where every transaction lives, every commission is calculated correctly, every compliance requirement is tracked, and every financial report is available without asking anyone to build it for you.
You can see the full results of the 2024 survey in our pillar post.
If you want to see what it looks like when your back office actually works, book a demo.
About this survey
The 2024 State of Real Estate Brokerage Technology Survey was conducted by TotalBrokerage in collaboration with T3 Sixty. Over 100 brokerage leaders participated. The survey covered market outlook, technology spending, top concerns, and purchasing behavior across the residential real estate brokerage industry.
FAQ
How much did brokerage confidence drop from 2023 to 2024?
The percentage of brokerage leaders describing themselves as "very optimistic" fell from over 40% in 2023 to approximately 15% in 2024. That is a drop of roughly 25 percentage points in 12 months. The overall sentiment distribution also shifted, with more respondents landing in neutral, somewhat pessimistic, or uncertain categories than the year before.
What is the biggest concern for brokerage leaders in 2024?
Margins. In 2023, interest rates were the dominant concern. By 2024, reduced profit margins had moved to the top of the list while interest rates dropped in the rankings. This reflects a shift from worrying about external market conditions to focusing on internal operational profitability, which is something brokerage leaders can actually influence.
Why are some brokerages increasing tech spending despite lower confidence?
Approximately 40% of respondents increased their technology spending even as market confidence fell. These brokerages are not spending because they feel good. They are spending because they realized their current systems cannot provide the reporting, accuracy, or operational efficiency they need to manage through a tighter market. You cannot optimize what you cannot measure.
What is the top reason brokerages change their technology?
Improved functionality, cited by approximately 45% of respondents. Cost reduction came in at roughly 12%, followed by better integration at approximately 10%. The emphasis on functionality over cost suggests brokerages are prioritizing tools that actually work over tools that are simply cheaper. They want their technology to do its job well, not just exist at a lower price point.
How should brokerages adjust their tech strategy when the market tightens?
Focus on three things. First, stop adding standalone tools that create more data silos. Second, get your financial reporting to a place where you can answer profitability questions in minutes rather than days. Third, automate the manual operational work like commission calculations, compliance tracking, and document management that burns your staff's time. The brokerages that manage through tight markets are the ones with visibility into their real numbers and systems that do not depend on manual effort to function.
What did the 2024 brokerage technology survey cover?
The 2024 State of Real Estate Brokerage Technology Survey, conducted by TotalBrokerage in collaboration with T3 Sixty, collected responses from over 100 brokerage leaders. The survey covered market outlook and confidence, top business concerns, technology spending changes, reasons for switching or adopting new technology, and purchasing priorities across the residential real estate brokerage industry.
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