The HousingWire award spotlight series highlights the individuals and organizations that have been recognized through our Editors’ Choice Awards. Nominations for HousingWire’s 2025 Finance Leaders Award are open now through January 31, 2025. Click here to nominate a Finance Leader.
HousingWire recently caught up with Charlotte Simonelli, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Anywhere Real Estate Inc., to discuss the trends shaping the housing industry in 2025. Simonelli — a three-time Finance Leader honoree — was recognized for her laser focus on accelerating Anywhere’s strategic progress and achieving exceptional financial results for the company.
As she reflects on her role in steering Anywhere through a challenging housing market, Simonelli shares insights into financial strategy, technological innovation, and her optimism for the future of real estate.
HousingWire: What role does data and technology play in your financial planning and forecasting for 2025, and how are you leveraging these tools to enhance decision-making?
Charlotte Simonelli: We’ve found many use cases where we can leverage generative AI in finance. We are using it to help streamline various day-to-day tasks and work more efficiently. We have many pilots in planning and forecasting where the results have proven quite accurate, and we are also using it to analyze our industry-leading data to develop insights across many areas of our business. With 750 terabytes of data, we can now analyze trends in seconds that would take weeks or months with only human intervention. This space is evolving every day and I’m excited to see how we will further leverage AI in the coming year.
HousingWire: How do you approach budgeting in a market where cost pressures, compliance demands, and technology investments are all increasing?
Charlotte Simonelli: The housing market has faced these challenges for a few years now and as an industry leader we have shown how our financial planning and delivery has driven outsized results on both EBITDA and free cash flow. I find it is even more important in down markets to prioritize investing for the future, and you will see continued increases in technology. These investments are geared toward driving amazing agent experiences and streamlining the transaction and our back office. We’ve committed to being at the forefront of this modernization within the real estate industry. In both good times and bad, we are driving efficiency in our business, and this will remain an important piece of our plan in 2025. Over the past five years, we have driven on average $100 million or above in annual savings and we will share more on our 2025 savings target at our next earnings release.
HousingWire: Looking ahead to 2025, what are the economic and market trends you anticipate impacting mortgage and real estate, and how are you adjusting your organization’s financial strategy to navigate these changes?
Charlotte Simonelli: We’re all watching macro trends on things like mortgage rates and supply that influence the market, but those are often beyond our control. Having the financial discipline and strategic focus to invest in our future, manage costs, optimize the balance sheet, and build an infrastructure to enable us to operate more efficiently will deliver outsized financial results today and drive even more octane for the future. We remain focused on what we can control and are optimistic for even more advantaged profit and cash flow when the housing market normalizes.
HousingWire: What are you most excited for in the industry in 2025?
Charlotte Simonelli: I’m optimistic about improved market trends and how Anywhere is positioned to seize the moment to shape and define the industry going forward. We’ve got proof points that show we should be able to do just that. Despite facing the two toughest consecutive years in housing in three decades, we have delivered strong EBITDA and free cash flow and successfully addressed almost $600M of near-term maturities in the past two years. I’m energized by both the challenges and opportunities that come with change. As I’ve said, I’m looking forward to how we’ll continue to leverage generative AI to accelerate transformation and change the way we work. It’s exciting to be part of this shift in the world; the possibilities are seemingly endless, and we will continue to be lead the way for the future of housing.