Above, Lamacchia company outing
Anthony Lamacchia isn’t kidding or even exaggerating when he says he knew at the age of seven that he’d build a big company someday. That prediction has since come true—and then some.
Today, as he celebrates his 20th year in the residential real estate business, Lamacchia has not only created a $2B-plus New England-based real estate firm—Lamacchia Realty—but has steadily built a growing, national following, thanks to his training company, Crush It In Real Estate, and his latest role as industry advocate, boldly speaking out in defense of real estate professionals post Burnett trial.
Power broker, real estate trainer, industry hero…all of these descriptors are valid. The question is, how exactly did Anthony Lamacchia get here?
Planting the seeds of a billion-dollar business
Lamacchia is quick to attribute his entrepreneurial drive and eventual success to his childhood, where he was immersed in the inner workings of his family’s landscaping business. During this time, he closely watched and learned from both his father, the company’s frontman, and his grandfather, the numbers’ guy.
“My grandfather was the accountant for the company, so I was able to learn both sides of the business,” says Lamacchia, who worked in the field while also absorbing the financial details.
While Lamacchia admits that academics were never his thing, describing himself as a “terrible” student, a natural aptitude for numbers emerged.
“My grandfather would say, ‘Anthony gets really good at math when you put a dollar sign in front of a number,’” he laughs. “I was able to learn the accounting aspects of business very young, seeing how expenses get applied, what we spent in the field compared to the financial reporting my grandfather was doing, and payroll.”
Joe Lamacchia, Anthony’s father, recognized this fledgling entrepreneur in the making, and had no doubt that his son would make it big someday.
“He was lucky to have a grandfather who was a CPA, teaching him profit and loss statements at 12 years old, and working with his hyperactive dad in his landscape construction business,” says Joe Lamacchia. “He was like a little sponge and learned all he could.”
But in addition to this hands-on exposure to growing and running a business, young Lamacchia also exhibited the personality traits that would serve him well in the future.
“He had tremendous energy and was always asking questions, to the point where I actually called him ‘50 questions’ as a nickname,” says Joe Lamacchia. “He was willing to watch the news and business shows with me and my dad at a very young age.
“He was basically not afraid of anything,” he adds. “He had a lot of courage—along with a pushy wise-ass way.”
Lamacchia’s close involvement in the family landscaping business—and the financial gain it afforded him as he played an increasingly bigger role—helped set him up for the next pivotal step in his journey: real estate investing.
“I didn’t go to college, and I was saving money from a very young age,” he says. “I had just turned 21 and bought a $103,000 condo. So, my beginning in real estate was investing in my early 20s.”
Fast-tracking a dream
Transitioning fully from landscaping to real estate, Lamacchia became a real estate agent with a local RE/MAX brokerage. His goal as an agent was simple—and ambitious: to dominate.
That same goal has come to fruition at just about every stage of Lamacchia’s first two decades in the real estate business. He quickly became a top-producing agent, then built a team that dominated the region. In 2009, he opened Lamacchia Realty, steadily growing the firm with a goal to become the No. 1 brokerage in the Northeast. In 2010, he was the No. 1 REALTOR® in Massachusetts by total sales at age 29. And at press time, Lamacchia had just been named REALTOR® of the Year by the Greater Boston Association of REALTORS®.
Lamacchia Realty’s Senior Vice President of Finance Sarah Chaisson was there at the very beginning, serving
as Lamacchia’s first employee when he launched the business in 2005 out of the guest room in his home.
“Since I have been here since day one, it is extra special to me to see all the hard work pay off and see the company reach new heights,” says Chaisson. “Witnessing it has been very exciting and inspiring, and it reflects the great leadership that we have. We have added so many wonderful people to the company, and I am looking forward to continuing to grow.”
The company’s ability to grow despite the current industry and market upheaval is all about the constant focus on training and services that it offers to agents, according to Chief Operating Officer Jackie Louh. “With all of these challenges and changes, it’s important to stay on top of things and be in front of our agents regularly,” she says. “Ensuring that our agents are educated and know how to maneuver these changes is paramount.”
Reflecting on his success to date, Lamacchia’s only complaint is that “it’s taken longer than I wanted.” By all reasonable standards, however, Lamacchia’s ascent from single agent to power broker was impressively rapid. While several significant milestones marked his journey, three had the most impact on the growth of the business, he reports.
The top milestone was reaching the $1B sales mark in December of 2020. “This year, we’ll be crossing the $2B mark,” says Lamacchia. “It should’ve happened sooner, but the market slowed down.”
Lamacchia attributes this sales volume milestone to two other key milestones: learning how to recruit and learning how to acquire.
On the recruiting front, Lamacchia credits real estate coach Jon Cheplak. “I started working with him as a coach in 2017, and he taught us how to organically recruit—recruiting agents one by one,” says Lamacchia. “We went from 92 agents in November 2017 to over 500 in 2022.”
With recruiting mastered, Lamacchia set his sights on acquiring companies. “I knew we’d get there,” says Lamacchia. “But we’d need to have the sales process down, then recruiting, then acquiring.” At press time, Lamacchia has seven acquisitions under his belt, with four or five more expected by the end of 2024.
Cheplak also advised Lamacchia on a strategy that would soon pay dividends: to create videos and share tips without promoting his own company, a strategy Lamacchia deployed through his Crush It In Real Estate social media platforms. This would lay the groundwork for Lamacchia Realty’s growth throughout the region and
beyond.
Taking it to the masses
For any business mogul, hindsight is 20/20, and Lamacchia is no different. Looking back, he can clearly identify his best decisions over 20 years…as well as his worst.
Launching systemized training each week, starting in the summer of 2012—with the help of real estate coach and trainer Brian Moses—tops Lamacchia’s list of smart choices, then later launching Crush It In Real Estate training to other companies and REALTORS® across North America. The program’s popularity increased exponentially during Covid when Lamacchia took Crush It live online, attracting thousands of REALTORS® to tune in.
“Working extremely hard to dial in training was my best decision,” he says. “Human beings don’t learn from one mention—it has to be repeated. Weekly training changed everything, and we’re reaping the rewards.”
And those rewards come not only in the form of agent productivity. “Right now, part of the reason why we’re acquiring brokerages is because they know about our training,” says Lamacchia. “They don’t want to deal with the new (NAR settlement) forms, etc. So, our training has been a huge help in attracting brokers to us.”
Louh agrees. “We have a number of things that brokerages and agents are attracted to, but the two biggest things would be our training and the services we offer our agents,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what level agent you are, with these changes in the industry, training is more important than ever, and we train weekly. Our services that we offer allow agents to do more business and free up more personal time. We truly are a one-stop shop for agents.”
Lamacchia’s most recent foray in the training arena is the course “Getting Paid in Real Estate the New Way,” geared toward compensation in the post-NAR settlement real estate environment, where buyers need to sign contracts agreeing to buyer agent compensation, and seller commissions must be handled within distinct parameters to ensure compliance. Lamacchia believes this is the biggest change to the industry in 70 years, and has, therefore, made the course available to anyone, including competitors within his own markets, a step he’s never taken before.
On the flip side, Lamacchia readily admits that he’s “made about a thousand mistakes” over the course of his first 20 years in real estate. One was going too strong on short sales branding during the recession. “I overdid it with the marketing,” he says. “I gave the competition the ability to say that that’s all I did, and that was never true. And as soon as short sales weren’t hot anymore, I had to play catch-up with our brand.”
But as with any good mistake, there was a valuable lesson learned.
“I should’ve been more thoughtful about the longevity of our brand,” he says. “Every initiative I do now, we think it through from every angle. That pain helped me.”
Milestones and mistakes aside, Lamacchia points to two personal traits at the root of his success: work ethic and embracing change.
“Most people lack the willingness to change, and every three to five years, you have to set a new course,” he explains. “That’s where most people fall flat. If you want to reach the next level, you have to change, and I think I’m uniquely good at seeing what changes need to be made, and then actually doing them. Many people know what they need to do—they just don’t do it.”
From local presence to national advocate
While many have gotten to know Lamacchia on the merits of his business success alone, over the past year, he’s reached celebrity status among a growing faction of real estate professionals—along with industry pundits, MLS and association executives, even members of the legal community—thanks to his outspoken and frequent commentary in the wake of the Burnett trial.
Lamacchia says that becoming an industry spokesperson was never his intent.
“Many things I planned on. This I did not,” he says. “But Michael Ketchmark really pissed me off when I saw him on TV on October 17 (2023) calling us a cartel. And I didn’t see the industry defending us.”
With over 200 live TV interviews and thousands of videos under his belt, Lamacchia knew that he had the ability to take on the press-savvy Ketchmark, the now infamous lead attorney for the plaintiffs during the landmark home-seller commission trial.
“When Ketchmark made those comments, I felt that no one would be able to match him on video because he’s that good,” says Lamacchia. “I didn’t see anyone publicly defending our industry and hitting him back.”
While he admits that he pushes the envelope in his videos and live appearances, Lamacchia stresses that he has good advisors and a strong legal counsel who help keep him within the guardrails. “I was concerned about speaking out, but I was pretty sure that if I played the cards the right way and explained things the right way, it would help more than it would hurt. That’s the dice I roll.”
While Lamacchia was simply answering what he felt was a call of duty, the remarkable side effect has been a massive increase in his social media following, which he reports has gone up dramatically—especially his Crush It In Real Estate YouTube presence, which has tripled. “I hear from people that never would’ve given me the time of day,” he says.
Although the industry is bracing for potential further DOJ scrutiny, Lamacchia remains confident about the outlook for the residential real estate business.
“I have no concerns about the longevity of the brokerage business,” he says. “The brokerage business is here to stay. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. In the immediate future, the market is in a tough spot—sales are at the bottom, I hope—but the longevity of the business is here to stay.”
The next 20 years
When asked, “What’s next?” Lamacchia is as incisive as ever: “I want us to be a national brand and one of the biggest companies in the country—certainly the biggest in the Northeast.”
Chaisson has no doubt that these goals will be realized. “We are extremely lucky to have the best leadership team in the business,” she says. “Anthony is a great visionary and is always very transparent with our staff and agents on the ‘why’ behind things. We are always growing and adapting to the ever-changing real estate market.”
While his accomplishments and goals are rooted in the growth of the business, the most gratifying part of Lamacchia’s career thus far stems from something far more valuable than any sales achievement or big acquisition—something that gives him chills to talk about.
“The most rewarding part of my career is helping people improve their lives, and we’re now doing that at a mass scale,” he says. “Ten years ago, I was helping agents one at a time; now we’re doing that in a much larger fashion, so I’m able to impact more lives.”
Naturally, Joe Lamacchia—who worked hard to ensure that all of his children would be successful—is extremely proud. “I always knew Anthony would be successful,” he says. “Failure is not an option—and funny, as time goes on, Anthony is teaching me.”
For more information, visit https://www.lamacchiarealty.com/homes-for-sale/.
