Company: HOUS
Filing Date: 2025-05-07
Form Type: 10-Q
Source: 0001398987-25-000067
Chunk: 96

Company: Anywhere Real Estate Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-05-07
Form: 10-Q
Item: Item 2
Chunk 96
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) reducing the royalties we receive from our franchisees, (ii) reducing the commissions our company owned brokerage operations earn, and (iii) reducing the demand for services offered through Title Group, including title, escrow and settlement services or the services of our mortgage origination, title underwriter insurance, or other joint ventures. Additionally, declining closed homesale sides and/or declines in average homesale price increase the risk of franchisee default due to lower homesale volume. Further, our results have been and may continue to be negatively affected by a decline in commission rates charged by brokers, greater commission payments to independent sales agents, lower royalty rates from franchisees or an increase in other incentives paid to franchisees, among other factors.

Royalty fees are charged to all franchisees pursuant to the terms of the relevant franchise agreements and franchisees may receive volume incentives described in each of the real estate brands' franchise disclosure documents. Other incentives may also be used as consideration to attract new franchisees, grow franchisees (including through independent sales agent recruitment) or extend existing franchise agreements, although in contrast to volume incentives, the majority of other incentives are not homesale transaction based. See Part I., "Item 1.—Business—Anywhere Brands—Franchise Group—Operations—Franchising" in our 2024 Form 10-K for additional information.

Over the past several years, our top 250 franchisees have grown faster than our other franchisees through organic growth and market consolidation, which has, and may continue to, put pressure on our ability to renew or negotiate franchise agreements with favorable terms due to their size and scale, and that has had, and could continue to have, an adverse impact on our royalty revenue. The gross commission income earned by our top 250 franchisees as a percentage of total gross commission income generated by all of our franchisees was 76% in 2024 compared to 67% in 2019.

We face significant competition from other national real estate brokerage brand franchisors for franchisees and we expect that the trend of increasing incentives will continue in the future in order to attract, retain, and help grow certain franchisees. Taking into account competitive factors, from time to time, we have and may continue to introduce pilot programs or restructure or revise the model used at one or more franchised brands, including with respect to fee structures, minimum production requirements or other terms. We expect to experience pressures on net royalty per side, largely due to the impact of competitive market factors noted above and continued concentration among our