by Julia Lashay Israel | Jun 6, 2025 | Industry, News Feed
Bigger. Better. Bolder. Inman Connect is heading to San Diego. Join thousands of real estate pros, connect with the Inman Community, and gain insights from hundreds of leading minds shaping the industry. If you’re ready to grow your business and invest in yourself, this is where you need to be. Go BIG in San Diego!
As a real estate agent, your time is a valuable resource. With a packed schedule of client meetings, property showings and negotiations, managing your financial tasks can feel overwhelming. Yet many agents find themselves spending hours on financial responsibilities that could be handled by professionals.
Delegating these tasks not only gives you more time to focus on your clients but also ensures that your financial strategies are optimized for long-term success. Here are five key financial tasks real estate agents should delegate to a trusted financial advisor.
1. Tax planning
Navigating the complexities of tax planning can be daunting, especially for self-employed individuals like real estate agents. With fluctuating income and various potential deductions, it’s easy to make costly mistakes.
A financial advisor can work with your CPA to help you develop a personalized tax strategy, optimizing your deductions and minimizing your liabilities. This might include advice on tax-deferred retirement plans, maximizing expenses and ensuring compliance with changing tax laws. The peace of mind that comes with knowing your taxes are being managed professionally allows you to focus on building your business without the constant worry of tax season.
Additionally, a financial advisor can help you explore various tax-advantaged accounts and investment strategies, like IRAs or HSA accounts, to reduce your taxable income and prepare for future financial needs. By delegating your tax planning, you ensure you’re not leaving money on the table, and you can focus on growing your real estate business.
2. Retirement planning
One of the most crucial yet often overlooked aspects of being a real estate agent is retirement planning. Unlike traditional employees, agents don’t have employer-sponsored retirement plans, so it’s essential to take the initiative in building a secure financial future. A financial advisor can help you explore options such as Solo 401(K)s, SEP IRAs and traditional IRAs, allowing you to save and invest for retirement despite variable income.
A key benefit of delegating retirement planning is that a financial advisor can help you craft a strategy that aligns with your fluctuating income. They will assess your contributions, make recommendations on how much you should be setting aside each year, and adjust your strategy as your financial situation evolves.
Furthermore, your advisor will ensure that your retirement savings are properly invested to maximize growth while minimizing risk, helping you build a reliable source of income for your future.
3. Estate planning review
Estate planning is essential for protecting your assets, ensuring your wealth is passed down to loved ones and minimizing estate taxes. However, many agents neglect this area, focusing solely on their business while overlooking the importance of securing their personal legacy. While a financial advisor is not a substitute for an attorney, they can help organize your financial information and work with legal professionals to create a comprehensive estate plan.
A financial advisor will ensure your assets, including real estate holdings and investments, are protected and distributed according to your wishes. They’ll help you review your life insurance coverage, analyze trusts and suggest strategies that minimize estate taxes and probate costs.
Additionally, they can assist in creating a will that aligns with your broader financial plan. By outsourcing this task, you ensure that your loved ones are taken care of and that your wealth continues to grow even after you’re gone.
4. Insurance analysis
As a real estate agent, ensuring you and your family are adequately protected with the right insurance coverage is critical. Without employer-provided benefits, you must navigate different insurance options on your own, which can be overwhelming. A financial advisor can help assess your current coverage needs, which may include life, disability, health and long-term care insurance.
A professional advisor will evaluate your current policies, helping you avoid overpaying for coverage or leaving gaps in your protection. They can suggest insurance plans that are tailored to your needs and budget, ensuring you’re covered against life’s unexpected events.
For example, if you’re in a high-risk industry like real estate, disability insurance can be essential for protecting your income in case of illness or injury. With a financial advisor handling your insurance analysis, you can rest easy knowing your future is secured, no matter what happens.
5. Investment portfolio management
Managing an investment portfolio can be time-consuming and complex, especially if you have limited experience. As a real estate agent, your focus should be on your clients and building your business, not on tracking stocks or managing mutual funds. A financial advisor can take on this responsibility, ensuring that your investments are working toward your long-term financial goals.
They will assess your risk tolerance and develop a diversified portfolio that aligns with your financial needs, whether that involves growing wealth for retirement, saving for a child’s education, or investing in real estate. Additionally, a financial advisor will regularly review your investments, make adjustments when necessary, and advise you on the best strategies to maximize returns while minimizing risk.
Delegating investment management frees you from the stress of monitoring the market and provides you with the expertise needed to achieve financial growth.
Delegating key financial tasks to a trusted advisor allows you to concentrate on what matters most: building and growing your real estate business. By outsourcing responsibilities like tax planning, retirement strategy, estate planning, insurance analysis and investment management, you can ensure that your financial situation is in capable hands while you focus on serving your clients.
Working with a financial professional not only saves time but also helps you optimize your financial decisions, increase your wealth and plan for a secure future. You’ll find that by freeing up your time and relying on expertise, your business and personal finances will flourish.
In addition to hosting the Color of Money real estate podcast, Julia Lashay Israel advises, trains, and coaches leaders, team members, and agents to recognize and address diversity, equity, and inclusion opportunities and challenges.
by Mauricio Umansky | Jun 6, 2025 | Industry, News Feed
Savvy agents are leveraging digital media to showcase and share their expertise and win new business, The Agency’s Mauricio Umansky writes.
Since the NAR commission suit settlement, buyer agents have faced new rules, new documents and a new normal. This month, Inman drills down on Today’s Buyers Agent with the fresh marketing strategies, skills and tools buyer agents are using to prosper in changing times.
In 2025, agents who aren’t actively leveraging public relations, digital marketing and social media are likely already falling behind. Today’s most forward-thinking agents understand that their business success is no longer driven by sales technique alone — it’s increasingly powered by visibility, credibility and creating meaningful connection with their sphere of influence.
This shift has given rise to a new kind of real estate professional: one who integrates deep market knowledge and client service with strategic ways of reaching and educating their audience. Through digital content, community engagement and thought leadership, agents are growing their businesses by sharing their market insights and staying relevant in a fast-evolving industry.
This isn’t about building personal celebrity or becoming a coach. It’s about making the most of the tools at our fingertips to communicate value, share expertise and drive results for our clients. Agents are finding new ways to lead conversations, answer questions before they’re asked and build trust long before a client ever picks up the phone.
My job is to empower this growth — by helping agents harness digital tools, sharpen their communication and align their expertise with business development strategies that help them go further, faster.
Strive for brand consistency
One of the most powerful ways that brokerages can support any agent is by helping them articulate their unique value proposition. It’s crucial to guide agents in defining their brand positioning — while ensuring it fits within well-defined brokerage brand guidelines. Are they an economics expert, a client service fanatic, a contract crusader? Figuring out what they and only they can provide to clients in their market is crucial.
Once defined, promoting and amplifying agents across the company’s owned channels is an effective way to help them build their business. At my brokerage, these include our real estate and lifestyle blog, email marketing newsletters and social media channels, to name a few.
Helping agents develop unified messaging creates consistency and lends agents a sort of “brand halo” that strengthens and uplifts the agent’s brand in their market — and it’s essential to creating real connection between consumers, your agents and your brokerage’s brand.
Leverage multifaceted marketing programs
Agents must effectively leverage the multi-faceted marketing support offered by their brokerage. Many of these programs are designed to help agents scale all aspects of their business.
Competition is fierce, and it’s no longer enough for agents to rely on instinct and hustle. To truly thrive, they must become savvy marketers — strategically tapping into the full spectrum of support their brokerage offers. From targeted training to bespoke media opportunities, brokerages now serve as more than just a place to hang a license — they’re dynamic engines for brand building and business growth.
Smart agents know how to take advantage of this. They use in-house learning programs to sharpen their edge in social media, digital branding and content strategy. They collaborate with marketing teams to craft compelling narratives around their listings, market expertise and brand identity.
Perhaps most critically, they engage their brokerage’s public relations team to tell those stories at scale — securing press coverage, building credibility and expanding their reach far beyond their immediate networks.
It’s about more than just visibility. It’s about creating momentum — amplifying every listing, every achievement, every unique point of view with the kind of strategic firepower that turns a good agent into a known entity. For those willing to lean in, the tools are there. The next move is knowing how to use them.
Build powerful media relationships
Agents can lean into established public relations partnerships or seek them out on their own. Leveraging established relationships with media outlets can bring an agent’s brand narrative to a broader audience and emphasize their diverse roles as sales professionals, but also as industry influencers and changemakers.
Our PR team actively supports our agents by repurposing agent-generated content into public relations assets and story pitches, generating additional media exposure for them. They also organize agent-led panels, secure speaking opportunities at conferences, nominate agents for awards and recognition programs, and coordinate thought leadership opportunities, such as feature articles in key industry publications. All of these efforts serve to increase agents’ exposure, enhance their credibility, and showcase their unique perspectives and experience.
From a coaching standpoint, our public relations team provides media training and talking points, making agents media-ready for interviews, panels, events and speaking engagements — aligning messaging with the broader company narrative to ensure consistency across all of our communications. Again, an essential aspect of effective brand messaging.
What’s next: Empowering expertise in a digital age
At our brokerage, we view our agents as trusted advisors, market experts and community leaders. Our role is to support them — not by asking them to become influencers or coaches, but by helping them use the tools of the digital age to better serve clients and grow their businesses.
In an environment where content drives conversation, agents who can articulate their expertise clearly and consistently will have a competitive advantage. As a brokerage, we aim to provide the structure, tools and amplification they need to do just that — while always staying grounded in what matters most: knowledge, service and results.
We’re proud to champion this evolution and even prouder to work alongside agents who are committed to raising the bar — not just for their business, but for the entire industry.
Mauricio Umansky is the founder and CEO of The Agency in Los Angeles. Connect with him on Instagram.
by Marian McPherson | Jun 5, 2025 | Industry, News Feed
Unable to attend NAR midyear in person, President Donald Trump sent a two-minute video lauding Realtors’ work and praising his One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Bigger. Better. Bolder. Inman Connect is heading to San Diego. Join thousands of real estate pros, connect with the Inman Community, and gain insights from hundreds of leading minds shaping the industry. If you’re ready to grow your business and invest in yourself, this is where you need to be. Go BIG in San Diego!
On the last day of the National Association of Realtors’ midyear Legislative Meetings, President Donald Trump sent a two-minute video lauding Realtors for their work and highlighting federal legislation aimed at helping small business owners and first-time homebuyers.
“A very special hello to everyone at the National Association of Realtors. I love people [who] are in the real estate business. I have a little bit of a proclivity for it,” Trump said while seated behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. “You play a vital role in helping Americans achieve the dream of homeownership, and together we will make the American Dream more attainable than ever before.”
Trump said his Administration is focused on “rapidly defeating” inflation in the hopes it will lead to lower mortgage rates. The Bureau of Economic Analysis’ personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge of inflation, moved down to 2.1 percent in April — 0.1 percent away from the target of 2.0 percent.
Inflation, short-term interest rates and mortgage rate growth trends don’t always move in tandem; however, Trump said inflation improvement and a 0.8 percent growth in personal income might give would-be homebuyers the break they need to enter homeownership.
The president also highlighted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which would extend provisions from his 2017 tax bill.
“We’re slashing unnecessary regulations, and we are working to pass the largest tax cuts and reforms in American history, which will turbocharge our economy like never before. Nobody’s seen anything quite like it,” Trump said. “The One Big Beautiful Bill, the most important piece of legislation in many years, will preserve small business tax deductions and so many want and need, so many real estate agents are just demanding.”
The Act, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in a razor-thin vote of 215-214, includes massive cuts to federal healthcare and nutritional assistance, but protects popular business and housing policies.
NAR and other housing groups lauded the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s continued deductions for qualified residence interest and business State and Local Tax Deduction (SALT) and Section 1031 like-kind exchanges. The Act also expands deductions for Qualified Business Income under a permanent Section 199A and introduces a new round of Opportunity Zones.
“[The bill] will stop trillions of dollars in tax hikes on American families and put more money in the pockets of homebuyers by raising take-home pay for the typical family by an estimated $13,000,” Trump said. “With your help, a record number of Americans will achieve financial independence and find a home that fits their dreams and aspirations, something very, very beautiful, and what you do is very beautiful.”
Before the video, NAR President Kevin Sears said the Association invites all presidents to speak at midyear. Trump attended the NAR Midyear Conference in 2019, where he received multiple standing ovations during an hour-long speech about tax cuts and housing-related policies.
Political tensions have been thick at this year’s conference, with NAR leadership noting earlier in the week that President Trump’s anti-DEI mandate did not influence moves to change its controversial hate speech policy, formally known as the Realtor Code of Ethics’ Standard of Practice 10-5. The policy change went into effect today and removes references to hate speech, adds a definition of harassment, and makes the policy no longer applicable to all of a Realtor’s activities.
“We invite each president of the United States to address our members directly,” Sears said. “We’ve been honored to host nine sitting presidents … The president was unable to join us in person this week. Just yesterday, he recorded a special message for all of you … it’s a sign of respect and recognition Realtors have here in Washington, D.C.”
Email Marian McPherson
Inman Deputy Editor Andrea V. Brambila contributed reporting for this story.
by Andrea V. Brambila | Jun 5, 2025 | Industry, News Feed
The changes, which are effective immediately, remove references to hate speech, add a definition of harassment, and make the policy no longer applicable to all of a Realtor’s activities.
Bigger. Better. Bolder. Inman Connect is heading to San Diego. Join thousands of real estate pros, connect with the Inman Community, and gain insights from hundreds of leading minds shaping the industry. If you’re ready to grow your business and invest in yourself, this is where you need to be. Go BIG in San Diego!
After extensive debate, the board of directors of the National Association of Realtors approved changes to the trade group’s hate speech policy Thursday morning.
The changes, which are effective immediately, remove references to hate speech; add a definition of harassment inspired by NAR’s Member Code of Conduct; and make the policy no longer applicable to all of a Realtor’s activities, but only those related to real estate.
The changes apply to the Realtor Code of Ethics’ Standard of Practice 10-5, which originally read: “Realtors must not use harassing speech, hate speech, epithets, or slurs based on race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity.”
On Thursday, the NAR board voted 624-248 to change the policy to:
“Realtors, in their capacity as real estate professionals, in association with their real estate businesses, or in their real estate-related activities, shall not harass any person or persons based on race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
“As used in this Code of Ethics, harassment is unwelcome behavior directed at an individual or group based on one or more of the above protected characteristics where the purpose or effect of the behavior is to create a hostile, abusive, or intimidating environment which adversely affects their ability to access equal professional services or employment opportunity.”
The original 10-5 policy was approved in 2020. A Realtor who violates the policy is charged under Article 10 of the Code of Ethics, which prohibits denying equal professional services to anyone in those protected classes.
Developing…
Email Andrea V. Brambila.
Like me on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter
by Jim Dalrymple II | Jun 5, 2025 | Industry, News Feed
The committee opted to rescind the controversial “no-commingling” policy on Wednesday, one day after NAR’s Multiple Listing Issues and Policies Committee voted to scrap it amid DOJ scrutiny.
Bigger. Better. Bolder. Inman Connect is heading to San Diego. Join thousands of real estate pros, connect with the Inman Community, and gain insights from hundreds of leading minds shaping the industry. If you’re ready to grow your business and invest in yourself, this is where you need to be. Go BIG in San Diego!
Leadership from the National Association of Realtors on Wednesday voted to scrap a controversial policy that separated listings depending on whether they came from multiple listing services or from non-MLS sources.
The policy was known as the “no-commingling” rule. It was an optional policy allowing MLSs to prohibit brokers from displaying listings from MLSs together with those from non-MLS sources. On Tuesday at NAR’s Legislative Meetings gathering, the trade organization’s Multiple Listing Issues and Policies Committee voted to rescind the policy.
The decision to ditch the policy or not then moved on to NAR’s Executive Committee, which voted Wednesday to abandon the rule, according to a statement from NAR.
“The National Association of Realtors Executive Committee repealed the optional non-commingling rule from the MLS Policy Handbook,” the statement noted. “This decision was based on feedback about the rule’s declining usage and relevance in local marketplaces.”
The no-commingling policy has in recent years become a source of controversy for NAR. That controversy sprang in part from an antitrust lawsuit that now-defunct brokerage REX filed against both Zillow and NAR. REX eventually lost that legal battle, and legal filings in the case show that 29 percent of Realtor-affiliated MLSs have chosen not to adopt the rule.
The policy has also attracted scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice.
In the case of Zillow, the mega portal began complying with the no-commingling policy years ago, but earlier this spring quietly reversed course and started allowing the display of non-MLS listings alongside other properties on the platform. Non-MLS listings had previously been obscured with a filter that many users never knew existed
Prior to Wednesday’s Executive Committee vote, some members of NAR indicated they were not fans of the policy. Among them, Matt Consalvo — CEO of Arizona Regional MLS (ARMLS) and a member of the Multiple Listing Service Issues and Policies Committee — told Inman he doesn’t like NAR’s optional rules. He also said he believes removing the no-commingling rule provides brokers with greater clarity. ARMLS never adopted the rule.
“When brokers operate in multiple MLSs and there are the optional rules, it confuses them because one MLS may adopt something and another MLS may not,” Consalvo said.
NAR’s Executive Committee was able to make the final decision on rescinding the no-commingling policy due to governance changes that meant the move didn’t need to go before the trade organization’s board of directors.
Correction: Matt Consalvo is part of the Multiple Listing Service Issues and Policies Committee. An earlier version of this story implied that he was part of the Executive Committee.
Email Jim Dalrymple II
