‘objectively Failing’ — Real Estate Leaders Call For Data-first Strategy

Dan Duffy did not ease into his critique of the housing industry’s approach to analytics.

“I’ll be the first one to admit that we are currently objectively failing at United,” the United Real Estate Group founder and CEO told attendees Tuesday at HousingWire’s 2026 Housing Economic Summit. “That’s a weird headline, to even say the amount that we’re harvesting our data and utilizing it for insights — and signals as to where we can take the business is still at a very anemic level.”

Despite overseeing roughly $38 billion in transactions last year, Duffy said scale has not translated into meaningful signaling.

He argued that most brokerages and mortgage lenders are not allocating sufficient capital or talent to data strategy.

“If I were to survey everyone in the room and ask you, how many data scientists you have on board, how many people are full-time assigned, and what’s your capital allocation across your budget, to harvesting your data and looking at what you can drive as a result of the insights, it might be none of us,” Duffy said. “Maybe there’s a few people in the room that are just absolutely smashing it, but probably none of us.”

For Duffy, the shortfall is visible in organizational charts and budgets.

“We’re under-invested,” he said. “If you really have a data-first strategy, you better have some data scientists. You better have some other properly educated folks who are sharpening and shepherding the rest of the organization.”

Nora Guerra — senior vice president of community lending solutions at Guild Mortgage — agreed that information alone does not create advantage without proper execution.

“We have to cut through the noise and really understand what the data is telling us about our communities, about equity, about who is still buying and who wants to buy,” she told attendees.

Clean data — and the gold mine many ignore

Duffy said the foundation of any data-first strategy is disciplined infrastructure.

“There are some core precepts that you [must] have present to be able to leverage data,” he said. “You have to have it in the right spot. It has to be hygienically clean. You have to label it correctly, otherwise, artificial intelligence (AI) won’t work.”

With clean, centralized data, brokerages can stitch together internal information and external signals to detect what Duffy calls “exhaust gas” — or early indicators of future transactions.

He pointed to HousingWire Data as an example of underused predictive insight.

“I mean, you’re sitting on a gold mine,” he said. “Everything you have, the predictive, the economic data that you’ve got. We’re going to look back and say we had no idea what we had access to.”

Guerra’s experience at Freddie Mac reinforced that national data can be powerful but overwhelming.

“At Freddie Mac, we were looking at the data nationally,” she said. “We were looking at equity positions. We were looking at affordability and access, and what that really taught me is that the story is always more nuanced than the headlines.”

Equity, millennials and lack of inventory

While acknowledging persistent supply constraints, Guerra said opportunity remains embedded in the numbers.

“We have a lack of inventory, and that is real,” she said. “That impacts affordability. It impacts competition and it impacts who can actually get into a home.”

At the same time, she emphasized the strength of homeowner balance sheets.

“There’s around $32 trillion worth of equity accumulated out there,” Guerra said. “We have a lack of inventory and we have the largest amount of buyers. During COVID, I remember thinking, ‘You know what? I need to be the best student. I need to read data and analytics. I need to follow trends. I need to do the research myself so that I can help inform our housing industry how to navigate this low-rate environment.

“I was part of this amazing four-year study where Freddie Mac went and studied buyer personas. I saw the data, and I started seeing the surveys, and I started really understanding our industry is evolving. As a leader, I knew I needed to be at the forefront of this.”

Millennials, she added, continue to drive demand despite higher rates.

“There’s 71.2 million millennials out there and 50 million haven’t bought a home,” Guerra said. “That, to me, immediately says, ‘I need to focus on millennials.’ I do a lot of data presentations to my housing industry partners — our Realtors, builders and developers. I speak at a lot of conferences to share easy data that’s digestible, where you can go out there and make a business plan out of it.”

Changing unit economics — and focusing on control

At United, ranked the No. 8 largest brokerage by transaction sides by 2025 RealTrends Verified, Duffy said data has reshaped corporate strategy — particularly around margins and agent productivity.

After surveying its 25,000 agents, the company determined they collectively spend roughly $150 million annually on data services.

“Our models are currently limited in the unit economics and the margin to just that sliver, and we’re actually doing our agents a disservice by not offering other things for their near-end business,” he said.

Data helped quantify the serviceable addressable market and informed decisions about what to build internally and where to partner, Duffy added.

That discipline also shaped United’s 2026 planning. Rather than rely on uncertain rate forecasts, Duffy said the company chose to focus on controllable outcomes.

Surfing green waves

To illustrate balancing short-term volatility with long-term opportunity, Duffy shared a surfing analogy.

“What I think is going on, and what’s been going on for decades, is everyone sees the shore break, and it always is a right to left, or a left or right, and then you clutch when there’s a certain swell,” he said. “You see everyone paddle out, and they’re all right there, and they’re fighting for waves.”

Instead, he described paddling farther out to catch “green waves” before they become obvious.

“How do we read that green wave, the wave that’s rising when there’s no one else on it,” Duffy said. “If you’re the first person out there, you get to ride a lot of waves before everyone realizes what you’re doing.”

For both leaders, the message was clear — the data exists. The competitive advantage will belong to those willing to clean it, interpret it and act before the rest of the market rushes toward the visible break in the waves.